District Health Action Plan - STATE HEALTH SOCIETY-----BIHAR

� Strategy 2: Involvement of Panchayat for motivation to patients Involvement of the
Panchayat can be the paramount force for motivating patients to seek treatment and
eradicating misconceptions attached to his disease. By orientation of health committees and
community leaders, influential members or Panchayat members can be educated on the issue.
� Strategy 3: BCC plan to mitigate stigma for increasing treatment responsiveness and
eradicating fallacious beliefs associated with the disease there is need for behavior change in
the community. This can be achieved by assessing the area-specific need for BCC and
development of BCC materials for effective implementation.
� Strategy 4: Reinforcement of service delivery for ensuring effective service delivery there
should be provision of quality diagnosis and treatment. Intense and continuous monitoring for
regular supply of drugs can strengthen the service delivery mechanism. In addition, by means
of counseling it is necessary to ensure that treatment is completed.
3 National Blindness Control Programme
Blindness is a major public health problem in most developing countries where eye care
facilities are still limited. Cataract is the leading cause accounting for 50% to 70 % of total
blindness. India is the first country in the world to launch blindness prevention related
programme as early as 1963 i.e. National programme for trachoma control. After few changes
in the names, this programme was re-designated, since 1976 as "National programme for
Control of Blindness" (NPCB)
The National programme for control of blindness was launched in year 1976 with a goal for
reduction in prevalence of blindness from 1.4 percent to 0.3 percent. The four-pronged
strategy refers to strengthening service delivery, developing human resources for eye care,
outreach activities and developing institutional capacities. All school children in the age
group of 10-14 years should be screened for refractive errors. Percentage of children detected
with refractive errors should be 5-7%.
57 | P a g e D i s t r i c t H e a l t h A c t i o n P l a n 2 0 1 2 - 1 3 D H S , S a r a n