Telangana InFocus - ‘Phase-2 ‘Kanti Velugu’ evokes more enthusiastic response from public’ Premium

Telangana Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari throws light on phase-2 of ‘Kanti Velugu’, a programme aimed at achieving ‘Avoidable blindness-free Telangana’, in a conversation with The Hindu.

To achieve ‘Avoidable blindness-free Telangana’, the State government has taken up a universal screening programme called ‘Kanti Velugu’ wherein the entire population of the State would be screened for eye-related issues.

As part of phase-2 of ‘Kanti Velugu’, a total of 65,85,739 people have been screened including 34,91,144 females, 30,89,152 males and 1,882 transgenders till March 6. The screening was completed in 1,473 wards and 4,089 grama panchayats.

A total of 11,70,370 reading glasses have been handed over to people and 8,32,806 others are prescribed power glasses. During the screening, it was found that 45,82,405 people had no eye-related issues.

Telangana Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari throws light on the programme in a conversation with The Hindu.

Q. The ‘Kanti Velugu’ program started on January 18, 2023. What has been the progress till now?

A. We have a total of 1,500 teams operating simultaneously in all the districts of the State. Apart from that, we also have 70 teams as a buffer. The phase-2 of the program opened up more enthusiastically compared to phase-1 as people are now aware of what they can expect from the camp. I was closely supervising phase-1 of the program and can say that at that time we would screen 1.5 lakh people per day whereas now it is 2 lakh people per day. The number of reading glasses being distributed in phase-1 was about 35,000 per day and this time it is more than 50,000 per day. The major similarity between phases 1 and 2 is that about 60 percent of the people getting screened are women and elderly. 

Q. How are women from rural areas responding to the program?