What is Unqiue About Our Trust?

Aid worth millions is pouring into India addressing eye related problems of adult and the aged e.g. Age Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Cataracts, Diabetes, Glaucoma, etc. Most of the resources are directed towards research and cure of such diseases. However there are very few programmes for children and the prevention of avoidable blindness, especially in rural India. In order to provide effective and efficient eye care services, we need adequate numbers of well qualified, well motivated and equitably distributed eye health workers (EHW). The reality today is that to service a population of one billion plus, there are very few EHWs. Those that are available are overworked, inadequately compensated, unrecognized and very poorly motivated. The overseers at Rural Health Centers have no input into recruitment, training and development of staff for vision screening.

Jyoticare Benevolent Foundation is addressing these problems and developing human resources programmes to improve the availability of EHWs for vision screening in rural India, thereby aiding ‘VISION 2020: The Right to Sight’ programme of the Government of India and WHO. Children are tomorrow’s adults. Early detection of oculovisual disorders are an important factor of healthcare, especially in the case of visual disorders like squint or diseases such as Keratoconus, which onset in childhood and puberty. Early detection can lead to early intervention and the elimination of the problem before it can have a negative impact on the person’s life.