Bitter cold. Saturday. Due to the uncomfortable weather and the holiday, there was not much movement of people in Lahan Municipality-22 Jahadi. However, at around 9 am, a white bus entered the community school through the village road.

Within a few minutes of the arrival of the white bus, a crowd of local people gathered in the school premises. This bus was from Sagarmatha Chaudhary Eye Hospital, Lahan. Locals, despite the cold, spontaneously came here to get their eyes checked.

A free eye check-up camp was organized in this school last Saturday, where hundreds of local people got their eyes checked. Lahan Municipality has 24 wards. The eye camp has been running in all the wards of this municipality for the past three years.

The municipality has been running a 'Free Eye Check-up and Surgery Campaign' in collaboration with Sagarmatha Chaudhary Eye Hospital. Under this campaign, free eye check-up camps are organized in various places in the city. During the eye check-up, patients who recover with medicine are given free medicine and those who need glasses are given glasses.

Eye patients including cataracts are operated on free of cost at the hospital in Lahan. In this way, the municipality itself bears the entire cost of eye treatment to the hospital. Not only this, the municipality also takes people to and from the hospital free of charge on the city bus.

The municipality allocates a budget of 2.5 million rupees every year for this campaign. People from general eye patients to those with vision loss have benefited from this campaign. Patients from the poor category have been greatly relieved after receiving treatment costing up to ten thousand rupees for free.

'There is a lack of awareness especially in rural areas, another thing is that there is no health institution nearby that provides eye treatment, there are financial problems, for these reasons there is a tendency not to get eye tests done, this campaign is a great help for the citizens,' said local Biku Sah, 'because, eyes are a very precious thing for humans.'

According to Rajkumar Yadav, camp coordinator of the eye hospital, eye camps have been organized in 43 places in all 24 wards of the city in these three years. In which 11,431 people have had their eyes tested. Of these, 2,445 have been found to have cataracts, while 1,840 have been operated on. 5,321 people have been provided with free medicines and 513 people with glasses.

Mayor Mahesh Prasad Chaudhary said that this campaign has made the general public sensitive to eyes and has also increased health awareness at the community level. Chaudhary also said that Lahan is going to be declared a cataract-free city soon.

'All people in the society have benefited from this campaign, awareness among citizens about eyes and health is also increasing, Lahan is now becoming a cataract-free city soon,' he said, 'No matter how much development we do, if the citizens are not healthy, it is of no use, the results obtained from this campaign have given satisfaction.'

This campaign, which is becoming very effective at the community level, is being expanded to various local levels in neighboring districts including Siraha, Saptari, Udayapur and other districts after Lahan, said Eye Hospital Chairman Rabindralal Chaudhary. However, he says that some local levels are still indifferent towards this.