New Year Greetings 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

On this New Year we will all joint together to take a pledge of spreading the Vision 2020 motto:

1.We will try to eliminate avoidable blindness with in the target period.

2.Right to Sight will be spread over to the common public , so that many of our women groups will also be benefited by our Vision Care programmes.

Joint Effort

When we think about Vision 2020 : 'The Right to Sight' initiative we cannot separate both Optometrist and Ophthalmic Assistant as both are the integral part of the primary eye care. Recently there is confusion among some of our senior colleagues about this terminology.

In India, Optometrists deal with primary eye care with particular emphasis on Refraction & Dispensing, Contact Lens, detection of eye diseases and rehabilitation of conditions of the visual system, mostly from cities. Ophthalmic Assistants are also doing Refraction and Prescription in addition to the identification of eye diseases at early stages and its associated timely treatment within the purview of primary eye care at village level.

Optometrists are mostly in urban setup both in private and Govt. sectors (In Govt, Govt Hospitals, Medical college Hospitals and RIO's all are in cities). Since Ophthalmologist and Optometrist are mostly in cities there is a need for Ophthalmic medical personnel namely Ophthalmic Assistant to take care of the primary eye care exclusively for our rural common poor people.

In the absence of Ophthalmic Assistants, even for simple vision testing and treatments they have to travel more than 40 to 70 kilometers unnecessarily. Removal of foreign body and other minor day to day eye ailments are the regular responsibilities of the Ophthalmic Assistants. As per Vision 2020 there are lot of responsibilities lie on both Optometrist and Ophthalmic Assistants. Hence it is time to join hands with each other for strengthening and up gradation of our cadres.

Draft

Ophthalmic Assistant : draft prepared by Bharath Mistry Gujarat, former President NOA and one of the active founders of NOA

Aims and objectives

The ophthalmic assistant is a professional ophthalmic health associate, who has been given two full years’ training in ophthalmic sciences and related health sciences. The aim of this training is to produce compassionate ophthalmic human resources that can play an important role in the eye care delivery system within the hospital and in the community. The objectives are to:

1.provide efficient human resources to decisive support ophthalmologists in providing eye care services at the secondary/ tertiary levels of the eye care delivery system;
2.provide appropriately trained human resources to deliver primary eye care services independently at Primary Eye Care Centers with specific autonomy;
3.provide appropriately trained human resources to supervise primary eye care personnel at health post level and community levels;
4.provide technical and managerial support at all levels of the health institute; and
5.plan and carry out community eye care programmes.

Brief job descriptions


A trained ophthalmic assistant would be able to perform the following jobs at different levels of eye care services throughout the country:

diagnose and initiate treatment/ appropriate management of all common eye problems, including refractive errors (blinding and potentially blinding conditions);

recognise and refer to an ophthalmologist those conditions that require more sophisticated care;

organise and conduct outreach activities such as screening camps, school health programmes, etc.;

impart primary eye health education on health promotion and prevention of preventable eye diseases;

select and prepare patients who require intra-ocular surgery;

assist the ophthalmologist in ophthalmic surgery;

carry out postoperative management of the eye patients after surgery;

perform eyelid and other specified minor extra-ocular operations;

perform practical procedures involved in examination, investigation and treatment of common eye problems;

manage an eye clinic along with keeping records and supplies;

supervise primary eye care personnel;

perform refraction and prescribe spectacles to patients;

perform a basic clinical Low Vision Assessment and prescribe necessary interventions;

ensure preventive maintenance and assured working condition of all types of instruments and
equipment used in eye care; and

perform patient counseling and service marketing in eye care.
 
BHARAT MISTRY

Our Profession

Thirty years back only few institutions have conducted optometry course at Trivandrum, Chennai, Hyderabad and U.P. Those days out of 30 permitted seats only 3 students joined . Then it gradually changed. It took 15 years to get full capacity of 30 students for the course.

The purpose of this course is allow vision testing and prescribing the glasses by qualified registered Optometrist. Qualified people must replace the services of the unqualified people. Earlier days this course was not encouraged even among learned people. As time moves on , they are recognizing the need of this technical people in order to handle the vision and refraction work and relieve them from doing hard refraction work.

The private hospitals also recognize the need of trained optometrists for doing refraction works. Some of the big optical house came forward to keep one optometrist in their shops for better dispensing.

Still there is no proper legislation by State or central Government to save the patients from quacks. Considering the large backlog of cataract and uncorrected refractive error, it is the high time for our Government to consider to uplifting the optometry course.

In India, Indian Optometric Association (IOA) is striking hard to maintain the standard of education and profession by conducting optometry conferences, scientific sessions and seminars etc., frequently and many magazines are already published.

Slowly private institutions are coming forward to conduct these courses from degree to research level. India is coming up to the level of foreign countries in terms of optometry education and services to cater the needs of millions of visually disabled.

People are coming from outside of India for short term and full term courses in optometry and optical field. Now a days Indian Optometrists are getting appointments in many developed countries and it shows the standard of our education is equal to the developed countries. Exchange visitors program for optometry professionals are growing up.

In meantime Ophthalmic Assistant category was newly introduced by Government of India in 1976 with the support of WHO . Still the course is being conducted in many States/UT”s. They are also doing Refraction and other Eye Care activities under National Blindness Control Programme. National Ophthalmic Association is approaching Health Ministry for the formation of independent council and other related issues. Optometrists and Ophthalmic Assistants are the two wings of a bird. They are vision caregivers of our people. They should be strengthened by the way of education and proper legislation.