Benefits and Barriers of Using WhatsApp in Eye Health Communication in Deprived Settings in India

Globally, 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment. For at least 1 billion, visual impairment could have been prevented or yet to be addressed. This poses an enormous global financial burden. India has a high disease burden. Vision impairment, through its consequent disability, has an impact that goes beyond the individual and the family. Vision impairment has serious consequences across the life course of the individual, and its impact is evident on family members, friends and carers. Vision impairment has a far-reaching effect on employment opportunities, quality of life and caretaking requirements, and is ranked third for years lived with disability. Recent decades have seen the emergence of social media as an effective healthcare communication tool, but this has not been studied systematically in eye health, especially in countries with high disease burden. In India, social media penetration is estimated to be 61.66% with 662.73 million WhatsApp users (2023 estimates). This qualitative case study used WhatsApp (as an interventional tool) to create an information resource link on basic eye care between a tertiary city-based eye healthcare provider and a deprived community, resident in the fringe of a large metropolitan city (Kolkata, Eastern India). Perspectives of the members from the deprived community (pre- and post-intervention) were assessed through semi-structured and focus group face-to-face interviews. A thematic analysis was undertaken to systematically interrogate data to create meaningful themes about the benefits and barriers of WhatsApp usage in supporting healthcare communication in eye health in deprived semi-urban settings.