Prof. B. R. Shamanna & his research scholar Sunny Mannava represented the University of Hyderabad at “Vision 2020: The Right to Sight India’s” 16th Annual Conference held at Siliguri, West Bengal on 3rd and 4th September 2022.
Their report entitled “Cost-benefit analysis of investing in Child Eye Health” was released on this occasion. This report is supported by Orbis India the Indian Country Office of Orbis International, an international NGO working towards blindness control and particularly focussed on children’s eye health.
The report highlights the economic burden of blindness and visual impairment and the need for adequate investments to prevent this loss along with early detection of childhood eye ailments. It made a fervent pitch to consider children’s eye health as a priority area for investment as both the caregivers time and number of dependent life years of the child with blindness is phenomenal and opportunities for education and other life skill related activities are hindered although the absolute numbers may be miniscule compared to the aged counterparts. More importantly it also highlighted the impact of the programs in the country which has contributed immensely to the global blindness control activities by having a baseline of 1998 and end line 2020 which was 2 decades of collective efforts and the need to sustain the gains and provide more impetus through policy prescriptions and budgetary allocations.
The doctoral scholar Sunny Mannava also won the best poster presentation award for presenting part of his PhD work on “Condition specific utility weights for eye health outcomes” which is one critical objective contributing to global and national policy.
More than 950 delegates; India and abroad; attended this meeting organized in the picturesque hills of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts of West Bengal.
The Dean Prof. Geeta Vemuganti lauded the scholar and added that this should be a motivation for other scholars to bring more laurels for themselves and the school. She particularly mentioned that the Ph.D. Health Sciences program was recently launched and many doctoral scholars have excelled in their research and published extensively and presented nationally and globally which makes the School’s program an attractive pursuit for prospective researchers and students.