I am doing the Pedal for Scotland, Classic challenge , a 45 mile cycle ride from Glasgow to Edinburgh to raise funds for the above project.

Project : Avoidable blindness and visual impairment are major global health problems. Economic deprivation is a fact of life in most developing countries and there are numerous pockets of extreme poverty and these pockets remain neglected due to economic , financial , geographical constrains and poor distribution of resources. While , among the over 50 year old adult population cataract and uncorrected refractive errors remain the leading cause of blindness, childhood blindness is one of the most neglected areas of eye care in developing countries. In a developing country like India, the ophthalmologist-patient ratio is at a dismal 1:10,000. Add to this, 70 % of the population in India continues to live in rural areas and 70% of the eye care professionals live in urban areas; thus eye care delivery to the doorstep of the rural areas remains a challenge.

The public/government sector has been struggling to achieve its goals of providing quality healthcare to all. More specifically the health care access for the rural residents remain hard. Various NGOs has emerged in filling the void with varying degree of success which the public sector had failed to address.

The current reality is, those living in the rural and neglected areas need to reach the urban hospitals which is a challenge for the rural residents. Trained community based health care workers can facilitate screening, identification and counselling of the blind affected individuals. Building a community based screening for visual impairment by community based health care workers therefore, holds great potential to improve the quality, access, and affordability in vision. This pilot project is in partnership with 'Incredible Hemachal' a NGO operating in the remote foothills of Himalyas, with track record (http://incrediblehimachal.org/). We propose to train community based heath care workers and volunteers to screen for vision impartment, communication and strategy to refer the needy one to further to secondary care centres. I will conduct the first three day training camp in September 2018. (at my own expense )

Funding : We are raising funding to purchase basic eye equipments and to pay salary for the health care workers for in the field to regularly reach remote areas and the screen for blindness.

If you like a, please email me for a detailed project plan .