Source: www.news.abplive.com
Healthcare should be within the reach of every citizen. For providing basic health facilities to all citizens, the government has introduced and implemented various health schemes and programmes. One such initiative that the AP government launched with this vision was the Kanti Velugu program. This program aims to provide universal eye care to five crore citizens of the state through various phases. The first phase of Kanti Velugu was conducted for eight months by 827 health teams. Post pandemic the central and even the state governments are now more committed to provide accessible and affordable healthcare to the people and such initiatives prove to be the feather in the cap and more and more states can take inspiration from it.
The second phase of the Kanti Velugu programme began across Telangana on Thursday, 19 Jan 2023. In all the 33 districts of the state, mass eye screening camps were officially inaugurated by ministers, MPs, MLAs, and other elected officials. Over the next 100 days, the camps would be held in every gramme panchayat and municipal ward to screen 1.5 crore people. Free medicines and spectacles will be distributed among the beneficiaries.
Health Minister T Harish Rao and Minister for Animal Husbandry T. Srinivas Yadav inaugurated a camp in the Ameerpet area of Hyderabad and distributed spectacles. Speaking on the occasion, Harish Rao said that the aim of the programme is to ensure a blindness-free Telangana. He said Kanti Velugu has become another role model for the rest of the country. Harish Rao stated that Telangana was ecstatic that chief ministers from other states had stepped forward to implement Kanti Velugu in their respective states.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao formally launched the second phase of the programme on Wednesday at the newly inaugurated Integrated District Collectorate Complex at Khammam, along with his counterparts, Pinarayi Vijayan from Kerala, Arvind Kejriwal from Delhi, and Bhagwant Singh Mann from Punjab.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, CPI national general secretary D. Raja, and other national leaders also attended the programme. Later, addressing the inaugural public meeting of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) at Khammam, the chief ministers of Kerala, Delhi, and Punjab lauded the programme and declared that they would implement it in their respective states. The Kanti Velugu camps will be held between 9 am and 4 pm five days a week, for the next 100 days.
A total of 1,500 medical teams have been constituted to conduct the camps. Around 1.5 crore people will be screened, and 55 lakh spectacles and medicines will be distributed. Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari has asked the district collectors to break the record created by the state during the first round of Kanti Velugu in 2018 by conducting more eye screening tests during this round