It is a matter of great concern that one out of every three blind people in the world lives in India. That’s an estimated 18 million, 2 million of whom are children. Every year, 2.3 million more develop cataracts in their eyes. Consider the situation in the rural-Bangalore area, around a city that is otherwise associated with high-tech wizardry and IT stardom. Over 4.3% of the 50+ age-group in the local population is affected by bilateral cataract blindness. The problem is worse for women of this age group– over 5.6% are affected. Children have the problem as well. Most of those impacted are the extreme poor. And, there is a severe shortage of eye care facilities and governmental funding. The cost of restoring a child's sight is equivalent to the average yearly income in India.
If there is good news in all this, it is that nearly 80% of all blindness is curable or preventable, particularly those that are cataract related.
Our organization, Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF), working with Sankara Eye Society (SES), its resident partner in India, is doing something about it.
THE ORGANIZATION
SEF-USA is a public charity whose primary
mission is to fund specific programs such as rural outreach and eye
operations, eye screening camps for schoolchildren and construction of
hospitals. Funds raised by SEF have played a significant role in
increasing the number of eye surgeries at existing SES hospitals in
India to its current rate of 56,000 annually, up from 8,000 annually
just a few years ago.
To date, SEF has enabled two eye hospitals in the state of Tamil Nadu to significantly reduce blindness amongst its population from originally catastrophic levels. At last assessment, the blindness level had fallen to well under 1%, from over 4% a few years ago. A third hospital, at Guntur in the state of Andhra Pradesh, built almost entirely with SEF help, has already performed over 10,000 free eye surgeries since operations began in 2004. Three more such hospitals are being planned. These hospitals are state-of-the art facilities that also perform surgeries on paying patients which then subsidizes the free eye surgeries -- you may call it a form of social entrepreneurship -- such that each hospital is expected to be "self-sufficient" in a few years.
SEF's mission is to realize the goal of 20/20 for the people of India by year 2020.
