Sightsavers Launches Bangalore Urban Eye Care Project and Partners with Essilor

Sightsavers and Essilor Vision Foundation (EVF) today announced their official partnership under which EVF has offered to dispense glasses to the marginalised society living in the slum community of East Bangalore.

On the occasion, Sightsavers and Nayonika Eye Charitable Trust (NECT) has also announced their partnership on a significant initiative to reduce the eye health issues around avoidable blindness in some of the most deprived areas of East Bangalore. This eye care initiative termed as ‘Amrita Dristhi – Bangalore Urban Eye Care Project’ aims at creating an effective and scalable model to deal with common eye related issues like Refractive Errors (RE), Cataract and Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) in the slum regions. This initiative would help strengthen the availability of eye care services in the low income group within a span of two years thereby reducing the occurrence of avoidable blindness. A low cost device called 3netra from a private health care firm Forus would be used for screening purposes. As a result, both direct and indirect cost of screening would reduce making it available to both rural and urban poor. This device also connects primary care centres to secondary or tertiary care centres through telemedicine for remote diagnosis.

Speaking on the occasion, Sightsavers (India) CEO RN Mohanty said “We are happy to partner with eye care specialists like Essilor Vision Foundation and Nayonika and technology partner Forus who would help us address critical community eye health needs, reach out to underserved areas, and save thousands of people from going blind each year. This partnership will enable us to build sustainable systems in the city to cater to the rising eye care needs of its people. Through this project we aim to reach out to approximately 24,000 people with potential eye ailments in the next two years residing in 10 slums of East Bangalore.”

Speaking on the occasion Mr. Dharmaprasad Rai, Head of Essilor Vision Foundation, said “We welcome this collaboration with Sightsavers India. During this project, Essilor Vision Foundation will provide around 1000 spectacles each year for the poorest people.”

About Essilor Vision Foundation

Essilor Vision Foundation started in the US in 2008 and has since expanded to Singapore, China and India, with many more countries preparing to launch in Africa and South America. Essilor Vision Foundation –India was incorporated in 2013, and has since provided refractive error correction to the marginalized sections of the society including unorganized labour, rural women and children orphaned by HIV/ AIDS.

About Sightsavers

Sightsavers is a global development organisation working to eliminate avoidable blindness, and support irreversibly blind people to lead lives of independence and dignity. In India since 1966, Sightsavers works with partner organisations to bring quality eye health services to some of the least served areas of the country.

In addition to eye health services, Sightsavers supports visually impaired people through education, counselling, training and leadership development, and advocacy for the rights of the disabled.

For further details please contact:
Sightsavers (India)
Jatin Tiwari
+91 8800233933
[email protected]