Check your eyes over the phone!

CHENNAI: Dedicating the first mobile rural tele-ophthalmology project to the nation, President APJ Abdul Kalam said that one should harness the revolution of ICT to reach out to the rural areas with healthcare. He suggested for integrated health care for rural areas, "and telemedicine is one area where you can take medication to the villages."



The unveiling of mobile rural tele-ophthalmology project coincided with the celebration of 25 years of Sankara Nethralaya, which is a non-profit charitable organization delivering eye care. Preventing blindness through early detection of eye ailments, creating awareness on total vision care and updating skills of the rural medical practitioners, utilizing video conferencing technology, are the core areas of the Tele-Ophthalmology project.


This project with an investment of Rs. 2 crore, ISRO meeting a major portion of it, is the very first of its kind in the country. The mobile optical shop, which operates in tandem with the tele-ophthalmology unit, is equipped to dispense spectacles to the patients at the site.


"A single day operation of the tele-ophthalmology unit aims to screen 200 rural indigent for eye ailments during the day. It also plans to organize awareness campaigns on total vision care in the evenings besides the weekly video conferencing amongst rural medical personnel and the specialists of Sankara Nethralaya, which is estimated to cost Rs 10,000 per day," said Sankara Nethralaya president and chairman, Dr SS Badrinath.

(CNS)