Vision of Tomorrow

A story of geriatric people who often struggle with their low vision.The story tells how poor men gets a new life when the healthcare delivery system reaches out to him in a developing country set-up

The man approached me slowly with the help of his son who was holding one of his hand.Clearly the person was found to be not seeing anything.But he was not blind.He seems to be septagenerian old man,a village folk.Questioning reveals he was gradually losing his sight which he and his family thought natural for an old man like him.I know for him and millions of fellow poor men and women losing sight is seen as a part of aging process.The worst part of this story lies elsewhere.These people become invalid and dependent on other members of their family.But with no social and financial support they soon become burden for their povertystricken family.Menfolk goes out to earn their bread while ladies spent their most of the time in doing household chores with nobody to look after them.These people are thrown into a world of darkness from where they can't come out to live a dignified life.Life continues  for them also but every morning when sun comes out to glow the sky it fails to reach their old,tired,yelow eyes.Yes this man had yellow eyes,or should I say yellow cataract.Old,thick cataracts are sitting on both of his eyes,that I found.I was wondering how many millions of my fellow citizens are suffering from cataract which is in laymans parlance nothing but opacification of lens due to old age.Thanks to various blindness control initiatives taken by government these people know that cataract is curable,if not preventable.
      In 1976 the Government of India started a National Program for Control of Blindness and prevention of visual disability.Principal cause of blindness today is cataract.Every effort is being made to strengthen the eyecare services at different levels so that so that curable blindness due to cataract can be completely eliminated by 2020.There are an estimated 12 million blind people in India.According to government data,62.6% of all blindness is due to cataract.So their vision can be restored by a simple catarct operation.Previously local school buildings were used as makeshift hospital where cataracts were operated on in a single day by a group of surgeons.Nowadays government tertiary care hospitals arrange for eye camp in rural health centres to identify those patients and they are brought at government's expense to the hospital for cataract surgery.Rural government hospitals are playing major role in catching them from hinterland of our country and sending to higher centres like ours for their treatment.
       These people comes with a ray of hope to doctors.And yes,they get treated for free.Frequently we come across more than one member of same family has arrived with the hope of getting cured.Occasionaly they mention that one person from their village got well treated so now they want to be next person to be freed from the shackle of visual handicap.Needless to say this confidence of common man on treating physician always keeps us going.Another thing that motivates doctors that these people have nowhere to go.Every other place seems to be costly for them.So this old man, I have mentioned,reaches us with his frail,poverty-stricken hands and sits infront of examination table.Battered by poverty and deprivation they have no hope remain.The humble question they throw is such a simple and fundamental one "will I ever be able to see again?"Now after few days when this old man after the operation,comes back to hospital with a smile that no money can buy.The desolate darkness in his eyes have gone forever.He is happy to see his world again.Life has started smearing his eyes with all its rainbow-colours.This is the of not this man only,but a whole India where millions of old men and women lives in darkness of physical disabilty.After losing their dignity and livelihood they suddenly become the number of epidemiological graph or area of our pie chart-the number we have to fight against and area to reclaim.Till then the fight is on from our side,to say the least.