RAAHI– Serving those that serve us
Eyes on the Highway: RAAHI National Truckers’ Eye Health Programme-Learnings and Reflections
The RAAHI programme leverages an integrated hub-and-spoke model, operating through static vision centres (‘the RAAHI Drishti Kendras’) and outreach camp locations. These provide vision screening, refraction, blood pressure examination, body weight measurement, cataract check-up services, and eye-health counselling and referral advice. The vision centres and camp locations are operationalized on ground by implementation partners. Most of the refractive errors are corrected on-the-spot by dispensing reading glasses (for near vision errors) and ready-to-clip (for distant vision errors), and custom made glasses (for distant vision errors) delivered at a location preferred by the drivers. Quality of the spectacles is assured by centralizing the supplies through the eyeglasses partner for all the sites. A robust technology infrastructure has been put in place to enable real-time data capture and monitoring across the sites. Uniform operating guidelines, branding activities and information-education-communication materials ensure standardization across sites.