Arvind Eye Care Systems: Providing Total Eye Care To The Rural Population

Submitted to: Dr. M. Sivagnanasundaram Submitted by: Harshal Gandhi (12A1HP027)

What should be the objectives of Arvind eye care system? And what implications the
objectives have for rural markets?

Though Arvind Eye Care tried various operations and activities to reach the poor and those people
who really needed these services, they made it successful only for the 10% of the population who
needed eye care. The main motto of Arvind Eye Care was to serve poor blind people with low cost
facilities. So their main task was in identifying the causes that are obstacle to their service process
and try to work out on the issue. The obstacles that they were facing are,

 Lack of priority for eye care among the rural population

 Poor acceptance of eye treatment and eye surgery
 Lack of awareness

So their primary objective should be to overcome the above stated obstacles and let them know the
importance of eye care and introduce the services provided to them for eye treatment.

Examine the reasons for poor acceptance of eye care services by rural consumers.

The reasons for poor acceptance of eye care services are

 Lack of awareness- first of all, rural population is unaware of cause of blindness and the
use of eye care services to restore their vision. Due to time mismatch or lack of
information about the place where these services are provided are also the reasons for
poor acceptance of eye care services.
 False notion about surgery- Many people did not know that most of the cases of blindness
could be cured and corrected. Patients were afraid of surgery, which led to low response
to the eye services organization’s effort.
 Costs Associated- Most of the rural people also unaware of the costs (trip and food)that
were borne by the organization.
 Family responsibilities, Not interfering with God’s will, Old age
 Indian population was also prone to blindness as a result of cataracts and diabetes.
 It was very tough to make people understand importance of eye care treatment as many
people did not know that most of the cases of blindness could be cured.
 Many people were afraid of surgery, which led to poor acceptance of eye care services.
Evaluate the options available to improve the acceptance.

Arvind’s approach was to provide eye care services at prices that everyone could afford. It provided
free services to 2/3 of patients by generating revenues from 1/3 of patients. Its culture is designed in
such a way that service personnel were disciplined, accountable and responsive to patients. The
service was not only limited to curable blindness; perhaps it also provided rehabilitation services. But
there was poor acceptance of eye care services by rural consumers. It was very important to
increase awareness and acceptance of the services.
Various options available to improve acceptance are:
Community outreach program
It educated the people about causes of blindness and how eye care services can restore peoplevision.
It included distribution of handbills and posters, shop hoardings, bus stops, loudspeaker,
announcement on TV, referral through doctors etc.
Apart from this, various intervention strategies were followed. It included four health educations
approaches and two options for economic incentives.
Health approaches:
 House-to-house visits by patients who had successfully received cataract surgery which
motivated people with cataracts to have the surgery.
 House to house visits by basic eye health worker, screening camps at central location in
the village.
 Campaigns by field worker at weekly marketplaces. People could also volunteer to have
their eyes examined.

Economic incentives:

 Partial incentive: free surgery and free eyeglasses

 Full incentives: in addition to free surgery and glasses, free transportation to the hospital
and free meals during hospital stay were offered
These approaches didn’t help much in creating surgical awareness except for “having a villager with
sight restored by cataract operation to promote and educate cataract treatment and with offer of
full economic incentive”. When a villager used to convince the rural people that surgery is safe, it
had a better impact than any other approach as rural people would trust villager rather anyone else.
Secondly, villagers were poor; they didn’t even have money to go to the hospital. So, full incentive
also a successful campaign to some extent.