Susaritha Govindan1, Sughan Balaji2
BACKGROUND
Glaucoma causes progressive loss of vision and significantly affects the quality of
life. In 2019 World Health Organization reported that glaucoma caused blindness
in 4.5 million people and is the second most common cause of blindness
worldwide. In India, nearly 1.2 million people were blind due to glaucoma of whom
90 percent remain undiagnosed in the community. The aim of this study is to
assess the level of glaucoma awareness and to analyse the source of information
that created awareness in a rural community.
METHODS
A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in a village which is an
outreach field practice area of our institution in Tamil Nadu, during the month of
October 2019. The total study participants were 196 and data was collected by
interview method and analysed using SPSS 16v software.
RESULTS
Among 196 respondents 12.2 % were aware of glaucoma, 85 % were aware that
it leads to blindness, 38 % had heard about glaucoma from close acquaintances
through word of mouth and 3 had undergone glaucoma evaluation in an outreach
camp.
CONCLUSIONS
This study concludes that awareness of glaucoma among the rural population
continues to be poor. Hospital based awareness activity and word of mouth were
the major source of information in our study group. Patients with glaucoma had
better knowledge and they would play an effective role in creating awareness. Our
study shows that the social media and mass media awareness campaign did not
reach the rural population.
