Rural activities at Trisha Netralay

Trisha Netralay ( A UNIT OF R..B. MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ) was established on the 27th of May 2000 with the aim to provide quality eye care to the needy and the underprivileged population at an affordable cost. This could only be achieved by reaching out to the rural population as they form the major bulk of reversible blindness due to cataract in our country.
                              Keeping the above aim in mind we set up a rural sub centre at Surhachatti in April 2004. We conducted weekly clinic at Surhachatti charging a very nominal fee from the patients. A large number of people of the surrounding area benefited from our program. We conducted our first rural outreach camp at surhachatti in november2004. Our mobile eye unit team comprising of a doctor, refractionist, ophthalmic assistant and a camp coordinator set out to various interior villages of darbhanga and surrounding districts over the next 2 years treating more than 2000 patients with eye ailments and conducting lens implantation surgery in more than 300 eyes. In the year 2004-2005 we charged a very nominal fee from patients for lens implantation surgery , but in the year 2005-2006 we conducted free lens implantation surgery camps with the h elp of the district blindness control society.
                              These camps were very useful in the sense that we learnt as to what kind of eye disease affects the people residing in rural areas of Darbhanga district. As was expected cataract topped the list. People in the rural areas work in the fields for long hours. The harmful rays from sun takes its toll on their lens resulting in cataract formation early in their lives. Other blinding condition which affects these people are Pterygium and Corneal Ulcer. Cause of the former being the dry & dusty condition and latter being due to accidental injury to the eyes especially while working in the fields. Since all these conditions are related to their profession it will continue to affect the eyes of the people residing in villages. Refractive error is also commonly seen but the relatively high incidence of Glaucoma came as a surprise for u s. Most of the patients with Glaucoma were seen in advanced stage and many were ignorant about their disease. Nutritional deficiency (eg.Vit- A deff.) affecting the eyes was not as commonly seen as we had expected. Since this mainly affects children of school going age group we go for all our camps armed with drugs needed to counter this condition. We distribute these medicines free of cost.

A brief description of the different ocular disease we encountered in our rural outreach camps is given in the table and figure below.

                               Only mass awareness program among these people and early diagnosis and treatment can help us solve these problems to some extent. Every time we went for a camp we used to make it a point to carry spectacles and necessary drugs and make it available to our patients at cost price. We would also issue them special cards so that they could review with us at base hospital paying a very nominal fee. The patients selected for surgery were asked to come to the base hospital on a particular date. A group of 15-20 patients were called at a time. A complete and detailed pre operative examination was done on all patients a day before the surgery, following which patients were given necessary medications and allotted a bed each in the ward. The following day the team of Surgeon, O.T. assistants and paramedical went about with the surgery. The patients were discharged following dressing the next day after giving them medicines and spectacles. The camp coordinator would them give a detailed talk to all patients and their attendants regarding post-op. care and about maintaining health and hygiene of the eye in general.