A range of events were organised on World Sight Day
Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital organised a range of exciting events to celebrate annual World Sight Day on 12 October 2023. The WSD events spanned the capital city of Bhopal and 10 districts of Madhya Pradesh through the hospital’s 39 vision centers.
A skit competition, rangoli, painting, sports contest, awareness activities, and screening were activities that were an engaging combination of raising awareness with creativity involving the younger generation in both urban and rural areas, the hospital staff and the general public. The common aim was to raise awareness on eye health.
A skit competition on the theme of promoting awareness about eye care saw participation from 68 students from 7 schools and was held at the Nandani Auditorium, Sadhu Vaswani School, Bairagarh, Bhopal. The judges included Col. (retd) Dr. Madan Deshpande, Consultant, SSEH; Mr. P.S Rathore, and Dr. Sarita Kumar, Ophthalmologist at SSEH.
A colourful rangoli competition on “Eye Diseases” and “Eye Donation” was an opportunity for the hospital staff to bring out their creative best. Medical Director, SSEH, Dr. Prerna Upadhyay, Associate Medical Director, SSEH, Dr. Rashmi Apte, and Mrs. Sandhya Deshpande formed the judging panel.
In Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital’s intervention districts screening, and awareness programmes at the community level were held at four schools in Sehore and Raisen districts; a rally by school students in Vidisha; painting and sports competitions were arranged for students from government schools in the Raisen district. Furthermore, an additional competition specifically for school children was organized at Higher Secondary School, Dehgaon in District Raisen.
In addition to the above, awareness talks, and screening were held. A total of 39 screening camps were conducted during World Sight Day week in SSEH’s intervention districts.
Through its various activities, SSEH successfully reached nearly 6,700 people with eye health messages and hope to have a positive impact.
Nisha Solanki belongs to a large family of two brothers and four sisters (of whom 3 are married). Both her brothers and elder sister attend school. Nisha’s father is mentally challenged. The responsibility of earning is on the mother, who is a daily wage farm labourer and grandmother, who tends to her goats. Two earing members for a family of ten.
Blindness in children leads to deep impact on psychological, emotional, and socioeconomic growth to the family. A child with blindness is more likely to have delays in developmental milestones, to be more frequently hospitalized, and die during childhood than a sighted child. Such severe vision loss also adversely effects the educational activities, orientation, and mobility from the early stage of life resulting in lack of employment privilege. These differential characteristics between a sighted and non-sighted child is more obvious in developing countries. Moreover, the disability adjusted life years (DALY) loss in a blind child is far more than that of adults with blindness.