Need to encourage voluntary eye donation: Vice President Naidu
Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu today stressed on the need to encourage voluntary eye donation and said this "sublime ethos" must be inculcated among children in schools. There is a need to involve the Panchayati Raj institutions and urban local bodies, besides enlisting the support of private sector and NGOs to augment the Central government's efforts to provide comprehensive eye care services, he said.
NCPB crosses eye donation targets for the year 2017-2018
There is a need to devise a multi-pronged strategy for strengthening preventive and curative eye care, Naidu said, addressing the 32nd Intraocular Implant and Refractive Surgery Convention in Chennai. "I am happy that NPCB (National Programme for Control of Blindness) has set a modest target of 50,000 eyes donation in the year 2017-18 and against this, we have achieved 69,343 eyes donation," he said.
Naidu urges people to focus on physical fitness
Naidu said there's little physical activity these days and urged people to focus on physical fitness. "Eye ailment is a major problem among children. We feel pity to see young school-going children wearing spectacles," he said. "This has something to do with our food-habits and lifestyle. I always insist on educating the people about the need to go back to the original-lifestyle," he said.
Naidu talks about how 'health is wealth'
"We are all getting different ailments, particularly diabetes. People say, 'Health is wealth.' If you have health, you can acquire wealth, but if you have wealth there is no guarantee that you will have good health," Naidu said.
School children from rural areas also have eye ailments: Naidu
"We have to revisit the entire system. I always tell people to love and live with nature," Naidu said. Naidu said there used to be an impression that urban school children were more prone to eye-ailments but now even their rural counterparts are suffering from myopia. "Excessive exposure of children to video-games, mobiles and computers has been adversely impacting their eye health," he said.
National Health Protection Scheme provides up to Rs. 5L medical-cover
On the Center's National Health Protection Scheme, he recalled the government has proposed a budgetary allocation of Rs. 54,667cr for the current year. The scheme involves providing medical cover of up to Rs. 5L to over 10cr poor and vulnerable families. "I am told the Union Health Ministry has already drawn-up the details of the scheme and will be soon rolled out," Naidu said.
