Vijayawada: Eye tests conducted for 33.5 lakh elderly people

Vijayawada : Minister for Health, Medical and Family Welfare Vidadala Rajini has said the State government has conducted eye tests for 33.50 lakh elderly people who crossed 60 years of age under the YSR Kanti Velugu programme and identified that 12 lakh people need spectacles.

She said the government had distributed 8.9 lakh spectacles free of cost and the remaining elderly people will also get them in a phased manner. She said the government noticed that 1.9 lakh elderly people need cataract surgery and so far surgeries were performed for 88,000 elderly people in the State.

Health Minister Rajini on Monday conducted a review meeting with the officials at the AIIMS in Guntur district. She enquired about the progress of the third and fourth phases of the Kanti Velugu programme. She said the government has recently formed 335 committees to speed up the Kanti Velugu programme. Medical teams have been formed to conduct 5.32 lakh eye tests every month.

She said the 335 teams have been working at the ground level to fulfill the objective of the government to conduct eye tests to all people of Andhra Pradesh. She informed that Kanti Velugu was being conducted in six phases. The third and fourth phase programmes are underway and she hoped to complete them by August 2023.

She said in the first and second phases, eye tests were conducted to all students studying in the government and the private schools. She informed that eye tests were conducted for 66.17 lakh children studying in the schools and noticed that 1.58 lakh children need spectacles. She said spectacles were distributed free of cost to all these children.

The Minister said the State government launched the third and fourth phase of Kanti Velugu programme in January 2020 with an aim to conduct eye tests to the elderly people, who crossed 60 years of age. She said that instructions were issued to complete the third and fourth phases of Kanti Velugu by August 2023.

Rajini said the fifth and six phases of Kanti Velugu programme will be launched for conducting eye tests to the people in the age limit of 18 to 59 years.