About BPA Bareja

Blindness and visual impairment continues to be a major public health problem in India. Availability and easy access to primary eye care services is essential for elimination of avoidable blindness. ‘Vision 2020: The Right to Sight – India’ envisaged the need for establishing primary eye care units named vision centers for every 50,000 population in the country by the year 2020. The government of India has given priority to develop vision centers at the level of community health centers and primary health centers under the ‘National Program for Control of Blindness’. NGOs and the private sector have also initiated some models for primary eye care services.

In the current situation, an integrated health care system with primary eye care promoted by government of India is apparently the best answer. This model is both cost effective and practical for the prevention and control of blindness among the underprivileged population. Other models functioning with the newer technology of tele-ophthalmology or mobile clinics also add to the positive outcome in providing primary eye care services. This review highlights the strengths and weaknesses of various models presently functioning in the country with the idea of providing useful inputs for eye care providers and enabling them to identify and adopt an appropriate model for primary eye care service.

The Porecha eye hospital (A unit of Blind People’s Association) has been started in the year 2003 on 19^th of January in the worthy hand of Mr. Indravijaysingh K. Jadeja, Minister, Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of Gujarat.The hospital provides comprehensive eye care services to more than 100000 (One Lakh) population every year.

On an average, nearly 40 cataract surgeries are done at the hospital every day. The department is fully equipped to do all forms of cataract surgeries with the cutting edge technologies, ensuring highest quality care.

The aim of the Eye Hospital is avoid avoidable blindness and create a society, where a visually impaired enjoys the same rights, responsibilities & opportunities. It seeks to reach the unreached by emphasizing on the premise “ Getting sight as a right” .

The major Objectives to fulfill the needs are;

To serve the community in control of blindness through preventive, curative and promoting measures by establishing eye care services in Gujarat.
To integrate the permanently blind, predicted blind as well as the poor-sighted people into common society.
Involve community in all phase of eye care project from planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of project work for better project outcome.
Develop community base organization, make them understand their own eye care need and promote them to raise resource for the same and part of the whole comprehensive eye care approach to full fill the need.
To combat avoidable and unavoidable blindness in Gujarat, with a comprehensive community eye care concept to organize Outreach Screening Camps to provide eye care facilities to the rural and tribal communities.
To create awareness among the communities by distributing information related to eye diseases in local languages.
To promote awareness generation program among school and college students.
To cooperate with State and Central Government in coordinating all kinds of blindness control programs.
To successfully implement “VISION 2020: Right to Sight”, a global initiative for prevention of blindness.
Raise resources from different local source to international source by developing eye care projects.