L V Prasad Eye Institute Rehabilitates 1 Lakh Visually Impaired Clients

Jan. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) achieved a remarkable milestone at the close of the year 2011. Its Vision Rehabilitation Centres – the Meera and L B Deshpande Centre for Sight Enhancement and Dr. P R K Prasad Centre for Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired - successfully rehabilitated 100,000 rehabilitation clients through its centre and community based services. This unique distinction is one of a kind in the world, as LVPEI is one of the earliest and the first institutes to provide vision rehabilitation alongside the state-of-the art medical and surgical treatments for those with eye problems, under a single roof.
The Vision Rehabilitation centres have a team of dedicated well-qualified and trained professionals who play a pivotal role in rehabilitating patients. Together, the two centres provide comprehensive rehabilitation services that range from assessment and prescription of low vision devices (such as magnifiers to help patients with low vision read again) to social, educational and vocational rehabilitation through training or re-training persons with low vision and blindness to the highest possible level of functional ability. These activities are not limited to the centre but those with low vision and blindness in the community who cannot access the services are rehabilitated through community-based rehabilitation services.    
Founder-Chairman Dr Gullapalli N Rao says, “Traditionally, even in the developed countries, rehabilitation services are provided by educational institutions or non-governmental organizations. However, these services should be part of eye hospitals where patients with low vision or blindness seek care. Also, rehabilitation services are almost non-existent in developing countries such as India. LVPEI had built these services in its mission statement right from its inception about 25 years ago. By providing these services the institute intends to impact the lives of all those with low vision and blindness by improving their quality of life.”
Around 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in resource-poor countries such as India. There are about 10 million people with low vision and 30-40 million blind across all age groups in India. Of these, approximately 0.25 million blind are children under 16 years of age and another 1 million children have low vision. Visual impairment can have immediate and long-term economic, financial and social consequences in children and adults.
Visually impaired persons often remain socially isolated and sequestered in their homes. Various factors are responsible for this, some of which include:
•   Lack of awareness that patients with visual impairment can be successfully rehabilitated.  Most non-medical people and even many doctors are unfamiliar with a truly independent visually impaired person’s capabilities and thus, harbour myths about both low vision and blindness;
•   Non-availability of and/or access to low vision rehabilitation services;
•   Insufficient provision of affordable low vision devices; and
•   Cultural beliefs/myths regarding use of low vision devices.
Given such a dismal scenario, L V Prasad Eye Institute, through its Rehabilitation Centres, has been rendering yeoman services to empower people with low vision and blindness so they become important contributing members of the society.
About L V Prasad Eye Institute
The L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) was established in 1986-87 at Hyderabad as a not-for-profit, non-government, public-spirited, comprehensive eye care institution. From its very beginning, it set forth as its core values the “Three E’s”, namely, Equity, Efficiency and Excellence. Equity translates as treating all patients (paying for services or not, rich or poor) with the same high-quality, no-compromise care. Efficiency translates into using the best available tools and technology, translating results of research into clinical practice, and evolving or changing policy as needed. Excellence is an ever-ascending goal that LVPEI attempts to achieve.
LVPEI has six active arms to its areas of operations namely Clinical Services, Education, Research, Rehabilitation and Sight Enhancement Services, Eye Bank, and Public Health and Rural Outreach.