Crusade against blindness

When plastic shards of damaged aircraft canopies pierced the eyes of soldiers injured in the course of battle, little did they know that ...

When plastic shards of damaged aircraft canopies pierced the eyes of soldiers injured in the course of battle, little did they know that their abject discomfort would result in a watershed for medical science. In the discovery that the plastic pieces did no harm to the eye, lay the seeds of a new era in ophthalmic surgery. Dr Harold Ridley, the man behind the scientific revolution, pioneered corrective surgery involving lens implants for the human eye.

A crew of over 17 members from the Armed Forces Medical College, headed by Col R G Dosh, led the crusade against the dreadful disease.

A free camp, twice a month, is run by the crew who have waged a war against it. 8220;As this is mainly in the rural area, we go there and after examining the patients we call them to the Command or the Pune Cantonment Hospital for placing the lenses,8221; says Dosh.

On Saturday, the Pune Cantonment Hospital Operation had over 50 patients who were treated upon by the AFMC crew who worked for over five hours on that day.

The operation, which could cost not less than five to six thousand rupees, is done free, thanks to the sponsors 8211; Lions Club and others who have come forward.

Lt Col D P Vats is another man behind the cry against blindness. 8220;Today we implanted 50 intra-ocular lens,8221; he said. Although there has been a change in the juniors coming and going out, Dosh and Vats are with the team since 1993 when AFMC started the campaign.

Though blindness causes considerable suffering to the affected individuals and their families, its collective negative impact on the socio-economic growth of the nation is enormous. Data from recent surveys indicate that over 80 per cent of blindness in India is caused by cataract alone.

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The other important cause in this list is corneal opacity resulting from corneal damage. Both these major cases of blindness can be treated. Hence with effective mobilisation of available resources and proper planning to offer suitable treatment to these unfortunate individuals, prevalence of blindness rate can be appreciably reduced.

The word, cataract, means water fall8217; and has been used to indicate opacity in the lens within the eye. The various factors which are considered responsible for causing cataract are malnutrition, exposure to heat and sunlight. Injury and metabolic diseases like diabetes mallitus, opacities in lens and cornea cause blindness by preventing the formation of image on the retina. While cataract is treated by extraction of the opaque lens followed by optical correction with spectacles, contact lens or intra-ocular lens, corneal opacity is treated by grafting a clear cornea from a donor eye after removing the portion of opaque cornea from the patient8217;s eye.

In October 1993, the Armed Forces Medical College of Pune launched a blindness control programmes to treat both cataract and corneal blindness. This high-volume cataract surgery in a base-camp approach was combined with motivation of the public for voluntary eye-donation to increase the rate of corneal-graft operations.

In a single operating season, 50 to 60 cases of cataract are operated with the latest technique of extra-capsular lens extraction with the implanting of Intra-Ocular Lens IOL. Operations are mostly done in a day-care basis. Through this approach, the college has so far operated more than 6,000 cases of which 2,000 cases have been operated in last one year. Materials required for these operations are provided by authorities of World Bank Assisted programme or charitable organisations of Pune like a number of Lions Clubs and Jain Social organisations.

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