Introduction

“Reaching the Unreachables”

The CCO is committed:

• To reach underserved communities through eye screening camps, Awareness programs, school screening programs and vision centres in order to promote primary eye care and thus contribute towards eradication of needless blindness
• To effectively contribute towards the objectives of Vision 2020 and National Programme for the Control of Blindness (NPCB) by reducing the backlog and addressing the incidence of various eye diseases
• To seek expertise and share experience with other service providers across the borders for enhancing the quality of service delivery and for designing models which can be replicated.

The outreach services are carried out within a radius of 250 Kms through the CCO at SSNC and provide eye care services to around 20 million populations from 13 districts. The mass coverage through outreach services is a distinguishing feature of SSNC.

Introduction

The idea of Community Ophthalmology waves back to the era of surgical camps which was first initiated by Param Pujya Gurudev Shri Ranchhoddasji Maharaj in 1950s. The idea was gradually given a professional touch and today almost 80% of the surgeries performed at SSNC are a contribution of such outreach activities. The basic idea of CCO has been indorsed to address the following issues:

• Combating seasonal variation in service delivery;
• Making eye care services available, acceptable and affordable to all;
• Promoting eye health awareness amongst the communities;
• Develop as a self sustained high quality high volume low cost model which can be replicated

The CCO department has made it possible for the SSNC to gain tremendous height in addressing the unmet needs from across 13 districts from 3 states today.

Reach-out camps

In order to make the services available to the rural mass, SSNC organize outreach camps within a radius of 250 kms across 13 districts. The reach-out camp organized by the CCO at Sadguru Sankalp Netra Chikitsalaya is one of the largest activities of its kind in central part of India. In 2013-14 more than 400 outreach camps were organized by the CCO department.

Year	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19
No. of  Camps	408	493	500	404	429	629	474	566	515
Camp Surgeries	21767	26804	26334	16999	26497	28254	26072	30844	30147

Primary Eye Care (Vision Centers)

Primary Eye Care Services are also made available to the rural masses through Vision Centers. Vision Centers are primary unit located in community and provide primary eye care services to the people. The model of vision centre is envisaged by the Vision 2020 – The Right to Sight, a global initiative of International Agency of Prevention of Blindness (IAPB – a global machinery working across the world for the prevention of avoidable blindness). SSNC, at present have 6 vision centers across 5 districts. Such centers are serves the following purposes:

• Assist in surgical follow-up;
• Serve as referral centres to the base hospital;
• Provide services such as Refraction; Optical Dispensing for minor ailment thus saves cost to the patient.

Year	No. of Vision Centre	Total patients screened	Total Spectacle Prescribed	Total spectacle dispensed	Surgery
2010-11	2	1971	889	469	80
2011-12	3	4131	1806	948	518
2012-13	5	7181	4190	2580	1777
2013-14	5	6452	6483	4802	2351
2014-15	8	31504	8011	6905	5937
2015-16	8	36760	9539	8432	6566
2016-17	8	31699	6900	5611	5294
2017-18	10	31407	7303	6209	4948
2018-19	10	44069	8447	5714	7064

Location of SSNC Vision Centers

• Vidisha
• Guna
• Jhalrapatan (Rajasthan)
• Biaora
• Chanderi
• Ganjbasoda
• Chippabadod (Rajasthan)
• Binaganj
• Ashok Nagar
• Bina

Pediatric Eye Care

Pediatric Eye Care services are made accessible to the children in the age-group of 0-15 through pediatric screening outreach camps either at school or at other community centers.

SSNC advocates the issues related to eye care in the underserved region on National and International Level by making use of platforms such as Vision-2020 and Community Ophthalmology Society of India (COSI). Apart from this the volunteers from the trust participate in all forms of activities pertaining to issues in eye care organized on time to time by various forums and celebrates important events such as World Sight Day, World Glaucoma Day etc.

• SEVA-IAPB-CCO Mentor-Mentee Project: SSNC has been selected under the project for building capacity through SNC Chitrakoot who is serving as a mentor. The initiative will assist SSNC in enhancing the capacity of reach out activities by providing support to Vision Centers and Outreach Camps.
• TOMS: TOMS is a well established American shoe company. When Toms sells a pair of shoes a pair of shoes is given to an impoverished child, and when Toms sells a pair of eyewear, part of the profit is used to save or restore the eyesight for people in developing countries. TOMS is working with SSSST through Seva Foundation since July 2011.
• McDonalds Pediatric Project: Acknowledging the fact that Paediatric ophthalmology is one of the least commonly accessed speciality in India, McDonald’s India (North and East) teamed up with prominent sight saving NGO, ORBIS International and reputed Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital (SCEH) for their sight saving programs. Currently SSNC is working as one of the partners to SCEH.
• Help Me See – helping the blind see: Creating a massive treatment program that will provide millions the miracle of sight surgeries in 80 of the world’s poorest countries. Help Me See aimed towards eliminating avoidable blindness due to Cataract by empowering local surgeons and hospitals towards sustainable eye care services.
  Help Me See is associated with SSSST since 2011. Help Me See-SSSST partnership making inroads in the Bundelkhand region for making Vidisha Division a ‘Cataract Backlog Free Zone’.
• Cataract Backlog Free Zone: CCO at SSNC is striving for making the two blocks – Lateri and Sironj of Vidisha district as Cataract Backlog Free Zone till end of this year. The effort will then be extended to the entire Vidisha district.