Inauguration of Shahbad Dairy Vision Centre in New Delhi

Sightsavers in association with Baxter India and Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital launched a new Vision Centre under its Urban Eye Health Programme in Shahbad Dairy, New Delhi.

Shahbad Dairy is a community of over a lakh people. It falls under the Rohini sub division of North-West district of Delhi. Production of dairy products was once the leading occupation here but it has declined over a period of time and a large population is involved in industrial work. The location was identified as one of the areas consisting of an umpteen slums.

Mr Surender Kumar, National Programme Coordinator at Sightsavers India and Sathish Nagappan, Manager-Community Outreach at Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital launched the Vision Centre at Shahbad Dairy in the presence of the community members.

“Screening for eye problems like Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), refractive error, and cataract shall be carried out in this Vision Centre. The patients identified with refractive errors shall be prescribed with glasses and the patients identified with cataract and DR will be referred to Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital for treatment. With the help of this Vision Centre, Sightsavers plans to reach out to 18,050 people with refractive errors every year,” said Prasanna Kumar, Director- Programme Operations at Sightsavers India.

Current eye health service provision in Delhi’s slum areas is limited. For many slum residents with refractive errors, road side vendors dispensing cheap quality spectacles without proper refraction are the only affordable form of service. After a feasibility study conduct, out of 2.5 lakhs around 25,000 people in the area were identified with basic eye care need over the year. This Vision Centre will organise ten camps for Diabetic Retinopathy and ten general eye screening camps around the area in a year. Through this Vision Centre and the screen camps in the location, we plan to reach out to a total of 5,250 people in the following year.