Study to evaluate utilization of eye care services at various levels of eye care namely primary, secondary and tertiary with respect to gender

Session Details

Session Title: Orbis Free Paper Session

Session Date/Time: Monday 07/09/2015 | 11:30-12:45

Paper Time: 11:36

Venue: Room 4

First Author: : K.Dole INDIA

Co Author(s): :    Y. Chougule   M. Deshpande                 

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To evaluate the utilization of eye care services at various levels of eye care namely Primary, Secondary and tertiary with respect to gender (male & female) at all ages, socio-economic status and urban rural areas.

Setting:

H. V. Desai Eye Hospital, Pune, India *Andrea has rest of abstract,exceeded 100 words **Andrea has rest of abstract,exceeded 100 words

Methods:

Cross sectional study conducted from 1st November 2011 to 30th September 2012 at PBMA's H V Desai Hospitals. Data from primary eye care services was collected from OPD screening data from outreach camps and vision centre,and as it is large number of population we will take a random 10% of population data to represent it.PBMA's Kantalaxmi Shah Eye hospital at nandurbar and H V Desai eye hospital , pune were assigned as secondary and tertiary centres respectively .Data containing age, gender , residence of patient (urban-rural), was collected from medical records system at the respective centres

Results:

**Females accessed more primary eye care services whereas males accessed more services at secondary and tertiary eye care level as regards the outpatient department and refractive aids as well as cataract surgery.At tertiary eye care level, in free cataract surgeries, females underwent more cataract surgery than males irrespective of visual acuity at the time of presentation. While in paid services, males underwent cataract surgery at >6/60 visual acuity in contrast to females underwent more cataract surgery at visual acuity <6/60.We found that, overall females underwent more SICS (type of cataract surgery) than males who underwent phacoemulsification procedure more irrespective of

Conclusions:

Gender remains barrier for utilization of eye care service at secondary & tertiary eye care level. Provision of transportation from primary level to secondary & tertiary eye care service can breech this gap. In the study area gender was also a significant barrier for availing cataract surgical services by phacoemulsification technique due to the high cost involved. As a suggestion we feel that outreach services should provide transportation facilities along with screening patient at primary level and at the tertiary level they could be offered phacoemulsification at a discounted rate.

Financial Interest:

NONE