Hope is Sight
Elite School of Optometry World sight day 2020
World sight day is the most important advocacy day in the eye health calendar and it’s held annually on second Thursday of October. This year World sight day is on 8th October 2020. Sankara Nethralaya along with Elite School of Optometry (ESO) always contributes to the society and as a part of this year’s world sight day and promoting the theme -“Hope in Sight” students of ESO have organized several activities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, implementing the community activities is found difficult and it involves many safety precautions. Keeping in mind the current situation and in order to promote the eye care awareness, various activities are planned and the details are given below.
Activity 1
“Hope is Sight- Displaying the solidarity of the professionals”
A placard displaying the theme ‘Hope in sight’ was made and a video collage of optometrists and optometry students holding it was made displaying the solidarity of the professionals.
Activity 2
E-posters-awareness through Social Media
Innovative E-Posters creating awareness on compelling eye health safety and consequential eye donation were designed. The posters surfaced the doubts of many common people on eye donation, myopia and eye care and digital eye strain and suitable exercises. We also received accolades for the attractive and informative posters from many optometrists in various institutions. These posters were shared in social media platforms.
Activity 3
Online awareness sessions with young minds
Eye care awareness session were conducted for the students of Omega international school, Gerugambakkam. The session was organized by the school and Dr. Anuradha ESO principal delivered key points on the burden of refractive error, importance of spectacles, common ocular problems, binocular vision problems and symptoms, color vision anomalies and she also shared the common symptoms of digital eye strain which is a raising problem especially in COVID 19 situation. 55 students from 8th and 9th grade along with staff members attended the session and doubts from the students were clarified at the end.
Activity 4
Promoting eye care through stake holders -Awareness and Vision ambassador training
Sukriti social foundation is a Non –governmental organization (NGO) which works for social welfare development especially for government school students and teachers. As a part of world sight day initiative, Dr. Anuradha, ESO principal promoted awareness on burden of visual impairment and importance of compliance to spectacles among school students through online session. Almost 75 people attended the session including government teachers, Sukriti staff members and volunteers. Vision ambassador training on basic vision screening with ESO’s PVS chart (Pocket Vision screener) was also taught to them and formats for documenting the vision, finding out obvious eye problems were also shared.