LV Prasad Eye Institute starts Institute for Vision Rehabilitation

In yet another effort to alleviate the problems of people with eye diseases, the Hyderabad-based, LV Prasad Eye Institute has started a Institute for Vision Rehabilitation.

The WHO Regional Director for South East Asia Poonam Khetrapal Singh formally inaugurated it. WHO has always emphasized on comprehensive health care, however health care institutions mostly focus on preventive, promotive and curative procedures, but care becomes comprehensive only when rehabilitation also gets the same attention.

Rarely one finds rehabilitation getting the same emphasis. Rehabilitation becomes most important when blindness can’t be cured. This is the first centre in the world which has inculcated rehabilitation and where all aspects of care, preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative are all under one roof and getting the same attention, Poonam Khetrapal said.

The Founder-Chairman of LVPEI, GN Rao, said this Centre will provide treatment and also training & education to professionals from all over the world and undertake research on rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, 90 per cent of the world’s visually impaired live in resource-poor countries such as India. According to the WHO, there are an estimated 8 million people with blindness and an additional 55 million people with low vision in India. Of this only less than 10 per cent have access to rehabilitation care.

LVPEI’s Vision Rehabilitation services have rehabilitated over 1,40,000 blind and visually impaired persons, including both centre-based and community-based activities across the LVPEI network. It is one of the earliest institutes to institutionalize a rehabilitation centre as part of its eye care hospital services.

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