On 18th Oct 2008, Kondapur, Sakshum organized a Eye Donation Awareness Event at kondapur for reduction in the visual impairment.
You Can't Be God But The One Who Will See His Creation From Your Eyes Will Never Forget You While Praying
OBJECTIVE
Restoration of sight and prevention of blindness
The areas of action are
Ø Screening the children in one school which are approx 200, as we will not be including children below III rd class and teaching them healthy food practice and adding Vitamin A in the food to prevent Vitamin A blindness. This way we will also sensitize the children and parents about disability
Ø Creating awareness among students of St Francis College, Begumpet about Eye Donation.
Ø A Demo stall close to Cyber towers, to educate people about Eye Donation and pledge their Eyes on the spot and Sakshum will later proceed with the further process with EBAI to register and provide eye donation card.
BACKGROUND
According to an estimation 4.6 million people with corneal blindness that is curable through corneal transplantation. Out of this, 90% of the people with corneal blindness are below the age of 45 years including some 3 million below the tender age of 12.
There is a severe lack of donor eyes in India. There are some 5 thousands operations are being performed every year, while 30,000 new victims are added each year to the long list of 7 lakh patients already waiting to be cured. Although there are enough qualified surgeons and plenty of potential patients, corneal transplantation cannot be carried out due to lack of donor corneas. In India there are more than 80 lakh deaths every year but sadly the corneal donations do not exceed a few thousand.
The reasons for very low number of eye donations are
· Lack of awareness in general public
· Improper development of infrastructure
· Absence of motivation even among the trained personnel and professionals
· Social and religious taboos
CHALLENGES
We have make it scalable by documenting the data like, no of students that would be screened and educated, no of college students that could be spread awareness and no of people, we would be able to influence to pledge for their eyes.
The project can be replicated on the same scale if we could make a influence this time. We are also planning to extend this project further by placing the pledge forms at the local eye clinics or optometric shops and outlets. We will also explain the process to the shop owners about the eye donation so that they can explain the same if somebody will have a query. In turn, we would give them a certificate for every 10 registrations or so :P
As per guidelines, an outcome of the project should be sustainable, scalable and replicable. I am wondering, that I m again missing the first and very important aspect of this event. Sustainability, this time this project is financially supported by Oracle, but I am not sure for the next event.
this project invites you all for feedback and volunteering on 18th oct. 2008
