Community Eye Care

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One Stop Shop for Community Eye Care

Weekly 5 free community eye screening programmes are conducted in Nellore and Prakasam Districts. Around 3000 free Cataract Surgeries with IOL implantation are carried every year. All facilities including pre, post operative medicines, food & transportation are provided free. All patients are followed up during postoperative period. All surgeries are done at base hospital only.

"You can lighten & brighten the lives of millions of poor blind people back home" "In India, We have @ million visually handicapped people, @% of blind population of world""Each year @ million new cataracts are adding"

And thank God, @% of this blindness is preventable / treatable but also, the affordability and accessibility of eye care services is a far cry from what is needed. We at P.O. Ram Charitable Trust - MEH&RC have commitment to our motherland to make quality eye care services affordable and accessible to all of our fellow human beings. To realize our dream we seek the generous support of Philanthropists like you.

Each Cataract Surgery with IOL cost the patient at least $100. We, the team at Modern eye hospital will contribute 50% of this cost and we look forward to philanthropist like you to generate the matching amount of $50 towards each Cataract surgery.

In 1985 the first description of HIV was published. By the end of 2001, 2.7 million cumulative AIDS cases have been reported to the WHO. However because of underreporting, under diagnosis and delays in reporting ,the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV-AIDS {UN AIDS} and WHO estimated that more than 22 million cumulative AIDS cases in adults and children may have occured. The developing world as a whole accounted for over 80% of all cases. By estimates over 37.2 million adults and 2.7 million children under 15 yrs have been infected with HIV since the start of the pandemic. It is estimated that about 7.1 million people have HIV infection and AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, 90% of them live in India, Thailand and Myanmar.

Eye is one of the most common organs affected due to HIV. Ocular involvement in HIV can occur in as high as 75% of patients. Ocular lesions are varied and affect almost all structures of the eye. A patient can have ophthalmic complaints during the early phase of the disease and this manifestation in fact helps in the identification of the primary HIV infection and its associated opportunistic infections. The ocular lesions associated with HIV can be categorized into four main groups:

Tiny retinal hemorrhages and cotton wool spots are early signs of infection and are infection and are often detected during screening eye examination. A cotton wool spot, which looks whit and fluffy, is caused by a circulatory disturbance may also cause small blood spots or hemorrhage. Since other diseases like hypertension and diabetes can produce similar findings, cotton wool spots and tiny retinal hemorrhages are not diagnostic of AIDS.

AIDS patients can contract infections from several opportunistic viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa which would not usually cause infection otherwise in healthy persons. The cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the kingpin of all these infectious agents. CMV retinopathy develops 0in 15 to 25 percent of patients with AIDS. It is an ubiquitous virus. While CMV does not cause disease in healthy people throughout their lives, it can “reactivate” especially in people whose immune systems cannot fight back. CMV can infect any part of the body. When it infects the retina, it causes CMV retinitis.

The retina is a thin, light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. Like a film in a camera, the retina reacts to light that has been focused by the lens. Nerve endings in the retina send signals to the brain along with the optic nerve, and the brain changes the signals into the pictures that one see. CMV reaches different part of the retina through the blood vessels and can permanently destroy retinal cells through inflammation and other harmful effects of the virus.Floaters may be the earliest warning sign of CMV retinitis. They appear as small dark specks that move slowly throughout the visual field and are best seen against a blue or white background. An increase in the number of floaters is an important early warning sign. Brief flashes of light that vary in shape occur less frequently in the early stages of CMV retinitis and may not appear until after the diagnosis has been made. Distortions and blind spots may occur in any part of the field of vision. CMV retinitis can usually easily be diagnosed by ophthalmic examination by the characteristic features of white necrotizing lesions associated with hemorrhage often with what is called “ a pizza-pie” or cottage cheese with tomato ketchup” appearance.Prior to 1981, no effective treatment for CMV retinitis existed. Currently, several drugs are available which can arrest such retinal infection. But these drugs cannot kill the CMV. They prevent proliferation of the virus within the cell The choice of initial therapy for CMV retinitis should be individualised. For the majority of patients oral Valganciclovir is recommended over the ganciclovir implant, intravenous ganciclovir due to its ease of administration and reduced risk of complications or toxicity as recommended by Infectious Diseases Society Of America. Other effective treatments include intravenous Ganciclovir, Foscarnet and Cidofovir.