At the primary level, DEF will play two equally important roles: First, primary diagnosis of eye diseases for children based on symptoms and simple tests, and their treatment either at our base hospital or through referral to Centres of Excellence. Second, Eye health education and Training leading to prevention of eye diseases, especially cataract and refractive errors
Tribal children face many very serious eye problems. Notable amongst them are pediatric Cataract, strabismus , refractive errors, squint, congenital cataract, amblyopic, nutritional deficient and other chronic infections. One cannot expect to upgrade the tribal children's eye health without simultaneously making an impact on these issues, and vice versa. We will, therefore, train and empower the staff- the teachers at the ITDA to spread awareness on some of these issues, build trust within the c
The first step is to train Masters Trainers among Teachers who in turn shall train all teachers as Primary Eye Care Catalysts (PECs) Each Two Member Teachers Team- as Primary Eye Care Catalysts (PECs), from each school under the guidance of a Master Trainer and Faculty of DEF perform initial screening of children. We anticipate that a trained Master Trainer will be shared between 8-10 schools in a given area.
we anticipate a total outlay of Rs 50 lakhs toward this. Since ITDA and DEF reach between 60,000-80 ,000 children , this modest start will address issues of primary eye health care of 100,000 children indirect beneficiaries and direct 36000 in tribal areas of the three districts . It is hard to believe that investing Rs 125 .00 ($ little less than two dollars) per child per year will make such a BIG difference in the lives of so many children with sight gifted. We feel confident that it will.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
