Also, state hospitals will expand their services to perform more cataract surgery with free lenses given and to manufacture spectacles, while schoolchildren are to be provided with free spectacles.

These are included under measures to help the more than 1.5 people in the country who suffer from various eye ailments.

Plans have been made to increase the number of lenses provided, to 100,000 from 15,000 this year and the number of cataract surgery from 89,000 to 100,000, said director general of health services Dr. Palitha Mahipala.