The Role of Social Enterprise for Avoidable Blindness Problems: A Case Study

Abstract

World's largest number of blind people are in India. Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind and 216.8 million having moderate to severe visual impairment (MSVI), 14 million are from India and is expected to rise to 15 million by 2020. However, the burden of global blindness continues to increase. As per WHO 80% of all causes of visual impairment are preventable and about 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in developing countries. The goal of “World Health Organisation” and “International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness” is to eradicate avoidable blindness and save about one hundred million people from becoming blind across the world. As per the Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness (RAAB) conducted under the National Programme for Control of Blindness and Visual Impairment (NPCB &VI) by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare India, Karnataka is among top five states for visual disability. The reasons for high figures in India are due to large population base, increase in ageing population and semi-tropical location of the country, lack of public awareness, orthodox beliefs and economic constraints added to this is the lack of medical infrastructure, qualified eye surgeons, inequitable distribution of eye surgeons with one eye surgeon to 2, 50, 000 patients in rural areas as compared to the one eye surgeon to 20,000 patients in urban areas. The problem of avoidable blindness and vision impairment continues to be escalating rapidly and is a major public health issues in India. Challenges like rising population, lack of infrastructure, lower income level and below poverty line population and significant number of aged people, it becomes difficult for the government to provide health care to all.