President of India Pranab Mukherjee has urged ophthalmologists to foster collaborative initiatives among government, private and NGOs to combat blindness and poverty across the globe.

Inaugurating the 28th APAO-AIOS (Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmologic Organisation - All India Ophthalmology Society) congress in Hyderabad, the President observed that government doctors in co-operation with voluntary organizations should strive to eradicate ophthalmologic problems and thereby help the society to overcome the growing poverty due to blindness.

The President linked poverty to blindness and said that major chunk of financial resources are diverted towards treatment of diseases and every year a vast population in the middle and lower middle class are pulled toward poverty.

To make a difference to the society Mukherjee advised individual doctors to devote one or two days a week to serve the society and asked them to go to rural towns and villages and play an important role in eradicating blindness and poverty in the country.

Complementing the National blindness control programme, which is striving to control vision problems in India the President said that it has achieved good results and has reduced the prevalence of blindness from 1.4 per cent to 0.3 percent.

Cataract, refractive error corneal blindness, glaucoma, surgical complication, posterior capsular opacification, posterior segment disorder and others have been the major reasons of growing blindness in India.

The estimated national prevalence of childhood blindness or low vision is 0.80 per every thousand population in India. About 62.6 per cent population are effected by cataract while 19.7 per cent are suffering with refractive error problems. Corneal and blindness due to Glaucoma accounts 0.9 per cent and 5.8 per cent respectively among the general public. Surgical complications, posterior capsular opacification and posterior segment disorders have also added towards growing blindness in the country.

Referring to the voluntary organisations the President said that coordination between governmental and non-governmental organisations would give a boost to control blindness in the country. He asked the organisers to give a serious thought on partnership concept of government and non-governmental efforts.

Referring to the research studies in ophthalmology the President stated that 15 per cent diseases are non curable while 85 per cent are curable. The President opined blindness could control by conducting large scale cataract operations where lakhs of poor people can be benefited and restore their sights.