New Delhi- A survey by AIIMS, Delhi, revealed that on average, there is only one ophthalmologist available for every 65,000 people in the country.

There are 20,944 ophthalmologists and 17,849 optometrists (primary eye care providers) working nationwide at the secondary/tertiary level, while the Vision 2020 initiative set a target of 25,000 ophthalmologists and 48,000 hospital-based paramedics to be achieved by 2020 for eliminating avoidable blindness in India.

The study led by Dr Praveen Vashist and his team from Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS was performed to determine the human resources (HR) and infrastructure available for providing ophthalmic services from the existing secondary and tertiary level hospitals in India and to assess the achievement of targets related to HR and infrastructure as per Vision 2020 norms.

Dr Praveen Vashist, Professor and Officer In-Charge of Community Ophthalmology at RP Centre, said the study highlighted that the distribution of ophthalmological services in India is highly uneven.

The situation is comparatively better in the states of South and West India, while there is a severe shortage of doctors in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and West Bengal.

Out of the 8,790 eyecare institutes enrolled as part of the study, 7,901 institutes completed the questionnaire (response rate 89.9 per cent), he said.

The eye institute population ratio for the entire country was one per 164,536 population, with better ratios in the Southern and Western states compared to the Northern, Eastern, and Northeastern states.

Among the nine union territories, the highest proportion of eye institutes was reported from the Delhi National Capital Region, the study said.

As far as ownership of eye institutes is concerned, nearly two-thirds of institutes (70.6 per cent) were in the private sector, followed by the public sector (15.6 per cent) and the NGO sector (13.8 per cent).

The number of optometrists per ophthalmologist at secondary/tertiary levels was 0.85, meaning that for every ophthalmologist, there is not even one eye care professional who conducts eye tests and diagnoses and treats certain eye diseases.

The optometrist: ophthalmologist ratio ranged from 8.33 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to 0.45 in Delhi, the study found.

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