Dr.Santosh Mahapatra
Visual impairment in children causes enormous loss of life time productivity.Vidyajyoti a pilot project on school health program was started in Sep, 2014 covering 15 blocks of Cuttack district, 2112 schools,320515 students and 7597 teachers. Project identified 10405 students who were unable to read 6/12 line in Snellens chart out of which 6408 students required spectacles and 216 students were referred to base hospital for further evaluation and management.Project was an eye opener for everyone including parents, teachers and government officials in terms of enormous amount of undiagnosed visual morbidity in school children,program is scheduled to be reduplicated not only in other district of state but also in other states owing to its success in 1st round of screening.School eye health should be taken seriously by central and state government as this can give us maximum productive visual years in school going children in contrast to cataract program which aims at geriatric population.
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