Sankara scales up fight against blindness

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

Its 'Vision 20/20 by the Year 2020' aims to perform 1 million surgeries annually across India.

The Coimbatore-based Sankara Eye Care, which runs a chain of not-for-profit eye hospitals, seems well on its way to reach its goal of conducting 1 million eye surgeries a year with the rate it is spreading operations across the country. Its “Vision 20/20 by the Year 2020” aims to perform 1 million surgeries annually through centres across India.

The group has now entered Karnataka with two hospitals — one in Bangalore and the other in Shimoga. The Bangalore facility, which opened in May, will serve eight southern districts and Shimoga another eight districts. Karnataka has the third highest prevalence of preventable blindness in the country today. The chain’s self sustaining model is to be replicated in Bangalore, where it aims to have a ratio of one paying patient for every four non-paying patients. It will use the advantage of scale to cut costs.

The three centres at Coimbatore and Krishnan Kovil in Tamil Nadu and Guntur in Andhra Pradesh perform 75,000 surgeries annually. Five states — Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh — have invited Sankara to set up hospitals.

For setting up a hospital it costs Sankara about Rs 12 crore, though, the Bangalore facility cost them Rs 20 crore. It has tied up with Robert Bosch Foundation for training manpower. Infosys Foundation has put up a community eye care centre at the Bangalore facility.

“We believe in tapping local human resources. So, almost all our staff at a hospital are locals,” says Dr R V Ramani, managing trustee, Sankara Eye Care Institutions.

The hospital will use youth and self help groups to find poor patients and screen them. While they provide transport and accommodation for poor free of cost, the hospital chain has the challenge to continuously raise funds to spread the project. It has been tapping into NRI wallets for the capital.

For the Bangalore and Shimoga hospitals, it has roped in AKKA (Association of Kannada Kootas of America), a non-profit, educational, linguistic and cultural organisation in North America. AKKA has actively involved in charitable work in Karnataka by organising many fund raising programmes throughout North America.

Even as Sankara is working to save eyes in the south, it is also looking northwards. It is setting up the Sankara Eye Hospital in Anand. To fund its running, again, it is looking to the Gujaratis living abroad to expand the project across the state.

Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF), USA — a non-profit organisation, established in 1998 in San Jose, California — run entirely by a group of volunteers to support charity eye care at Sankara Eye Hospitals in India.

What started as a grassroots community in the Bay Area a few years ago is now spreading across the USA, as more volunteers join Team SEF.

SEF collects funds for ongoing programmes and construction of hospitals. SEF needs more funds as compared to what it raises every year for the cause.