Project to help save diabetics' sight

Sankar Nethralaya, the Chennai-based voluntary organisation which has done pioneering work in public eye care, has launched a project in six Karnataka districts to save diabetics' eyesight. It has taken the initiative because it finds that most government effort goes in preventing blindness due to cataract.

The project 'Telescreening for Diabetic Retinopathy: Taking Eyecare to Rural South India' connects five districts "" Kolar, Mandya, Mysore, Chamrajnagar and Tumkur "" to a tertiary eye care institute of Sankara Nethralaya in Bangalore.

The project, spread over five years, aims at community screening of diabetics for vision-related problems. Its goal is screening diabetic cases to prevent blindness by early diagnosis and prompt treatment.

In these five districts there are an estimated 3.4 million diabetics and about 20 per cent could have retinopathy, estimates Sankar Nethralaya.

"Screening for diabetic retinopathy can be either ophthalmologist-based or ophthalmologist led," said Dr Rajiv Raman, associate consultant, Medical Research Foundation, Sankara Nethralaya.

With 70 per cent of the population in the villages and about 80 per cent of the ophthalmologists practising in cities, telescreening is the easiest way of covering the maximum number of population. With only one ophthalmologist for every 1 lakh population, an ophthalmologist-based model is not a cost-effective screening method.

Hence, teleophthalmology, an ophthalmologist-led screening model, offers a cost-effective model for screening diabetic retinopathy. Mobile units manned by optometrists and with equipment for screening and satellite communication for consultation will be used to access remote rural areas to conduct screening camps for diabetic retinopathy.

The data of people screened in the mobile unit will be transferred to the hub at Sankara Nethralaya in Bangalore where a specialist will review the pictures and data and give clinical advice.

Those detected with diabetic retinopathy at the screening camps will undergo clinical evaluation and investigation like ultrasound, if required, in the van itself by optometrists. The treatment will then be advised by the ophthalmologist.