Deputy Commissioner Gurudatta Hegde and Chief Executive Officer of Dharwad Zilla Panchayat Suresh Itnal pledged their eyes during the launch of National Blindness Prevention Drive in Dharwad on Thursday and appealed to the people to volunteer for the campaign.
Under the National Blindness Prevention drive, a series of programmes have been organised in Dharwad and on Thursday launching the drive, both the officials appealed to the people to help the visually impaired get sight by pledging their eyes.
The Deputy Commissioner said that under the campaign, the Health Department would be holding registrations at all the government hospitals and primary health centres. People could walk in and take pledge to donate their eyes after their death, he said.
Health volunteers would be holding awareness programme highlighting the significance of eye donation. Blood and eye donations were considered supreme donations and everyone should volunteer for the cause, he said.
Mr. Hegde said that there were two eye banks in twin cities and 164 corneas had been received from April last year till July this year and all the corneas had been harvested.
He said that the district administration had planned to hold leprosy detection camps across the the district from September 12 to 29. Health volunteers would be visiting 4.41 lakh households during the drive and collect information of any member suffering from leprosy. A total of 1,781 teams have been formed for the survey, Mr. Hegde said.
