Activity Report, 2006-07

A year of Loss and Renewal

Aravind Eye Care System will remember the year 2006 as the year it lost its Founder, the legendary Padma Shree Dr.G.Venkataswamy on July 7 . Dr V’s life was a long dedication to serving the Divine through work in the field of eye care. His tireless vision, inspiring leadership as well as his selflessness and humility shaped Aravind into all that it is today. Following this loss came a paradoxical period for the institute of mourning his death, while celebrating the richness of his life and the immensity of his contribution to humanity. Hundreds of messages from around the world came pouring in from people touched by his life and work. The President of India himself made a personal visit to Madurai to pay homage to Dr. V, whom he has long regarded as “A Hero of Action”. Dr V’s passing made all members of the Aravind Eye Care System look within themselves and work even harder with renewed faith and the conviction towards the short-term goal of performing a million surgeries a year and as ever, its long term vision of eliminating needless blindness.

Leadership Retreat: To Realign

The Leadership Retreat facilitated by Prof. Fred Munson and Ms. Cindy Harrison
The year opened with a two-day Leadership Retreat attended by close to fifty hospital and departmental leaders within the Aravind Eye Care System including LAICO, Aurolab and Aravind Medical Research Foundation. This retreat served to realign a rapidly growing organisation with its higher purpose and to establish specific strategies to strengthen its work and effectiveness in a shifting environment.

Expanding Horizons: Infrastructure and Innovation

The Lasik-Zyoptix Centre for correction of refractive errors was inaugurated on December 15 by Dr.Subba Rao, Director – JIPMER at Aravind-Puducherry
As in past years, significant additions to infrastructure continue to happen. The free inpatient wards and outpatient examination areas moved into a new and improved block at Aravind–Tirunelveli, thus also allowing for the release of much needed space for its paying section. At Aravind–Theni a whole new floor was added to provide larger areas for outpatient clinics, operation theatre and teaching. Theni now has an independent residential campus to accommodate its staff, as well as a guest house for visitors.

In Madurai, construction of the independent manufacturing facility for Aurolab is nearing completion. This facility is situated on the same grounds as Aurofarm. At Aravind–Puducherry, a state-of-the-art LASIK facility was added to address the demand for this service in the area.

In addition to accommodating the growth in routine activities, infrastructure was also added to facilitate innovations aimed at deepening the reach of eye care in the community. Today it is estimated that only one in ten of those in need of eye care actually gets it. Recognising the importance of addressing this problem, Aravind opened three more Vision Centres in the service area of Theni, at Chinnamanur, Bodinaickanur and Periyakulam. Community Eye Clinics were opened at Tirupur and Tuticorin, by Aravind–Coimbatore, and Aravind–Tirunelveli, respectively to provide comprehensive eye examinations in cities without ophthalmic services. With this the total number of Vision Centres and Community Eye Clinics now stands at five and four respectively. Together they are part of a larger plan to enhance access to eye care by having a permanent and distributed presence in the community.

Through these initiatives Aravind plans to reach more people and enhance the quality of their lives. Aravind is grateful to International Eye Foundation for supporting this new initiative in the Theni area and to The Lavelle Fund for the Blind, USA for having generously agreed to support the establishment of another twenty vision centres. Most of these will be in place by the end of 2007.

Transcending Function: Technology and Innovation as New Core Strategy

The fourth Vision centre was inaugurated at Chinnamanur on March 20. This Vision Centre covers a population of about 90,000
Dr. V, during his three decades of leadership, encouraged his successors to constantly explore new technologies and developments in other fields for furthering eye care to humanity. One such field was Information Technology. Over the years, IT for Aravind has transcended from being a tool for improving efficiency to becoming a core strategy for achieving its mission. All the five existing Vision Centres are interconnected with Aravind - Theni through wireless broad band. This was possible thanks to the innovation and technical support of the IT team from University of Berkeley headed by Mr. Sonesh Surana under the leadership of Prof. Eric Brewer. IT is now being used at Aravind quite probably for the first time anywhere in the world to provide quality primary eye care. Projects are also underway to establish a Virtual University and web based distance learning programmes. The hospital management software developed in-house, has now become a tool for enhancing efficiency and the year 2006 saw the installation of Aravind’s Hospital Management Package across more hospitals in Bangladesh, Nepal and India.

Another milestone in Aravind’s tele-medicine activities has been the designing and development of software for grading retinal images of patients with diabetes for diabetic retinopathy. This product named ADRES (Aravind Diabetic Retinopathy Evaluation Software), developed with financial support from Topcon, was formally launched in September. Recognising that the services of a retina specialist are often not available locally, this software was created to make possible efficient grading of retinal images by trained Ophthalmic Technicians. This is already in use in remote rural eye camps, and quite soon its usage is expected to proliferate among diabetologists and secondary care eye hospitals across the developing world.
Aurolab, working in partnership with Project Impact, USA, developed the technology for hydrophobic foldable intraocular lens. After extensive trials following the product development guidelines, these lenses have now been released for regular use making Aurolab the first in the developing world to have this technology.

More Hands in Service: Training Developments at Aravind

The School of Optometry was launched at Madurai on April 12 At the inaugural address, Dr.G.Venkataswamy emphasised the impending need to provide good vision to rural public.
On the education front, the year 2006 saw greater focus on management training. During the year, the first batch of seven fellows in Hospital Management, completed their training and are now providing administrative leadership to various departments across the system. For the first time, Continuing Education Programs were offered in the fields of Human Resource Management and in the application of Information Technology in eye care. The latter was jointly conducted with Sankara Nethralaya under the aegis of VISION 2020 – The Right to Sight India. As is now customary, several national and international conferences in various clinical areas such as Uveitis and Neuro-Ophthalmology were hosted at Aravind. Recognising the need for strengthening its refraction services, a separate facility was established in Madurai with support from Essilor India Pvt. to house the “Aravind School of Optometry”. All training activities relating to refraction, optometry and optical dispensing have been brought under this school. This school offers a 2 year Diploma in Optometry which is recognized by the Madurai Kamaraj University. It also offers other short term courses on optical related specializations.

Experimenting Elsewhere: Testimonials to Aravind’s Replicability

Dr. Sunil Kumar, Mr.Vasanth and Dr.S.Aravind with Mr.Rahul Gandhi and Mrs.Sonia Gandhi at the first anniversary celebrations of Indira Gandhi Eye Hospital and Research Centre at Munshiganj
In several parts of India and other developing countries, eye care services are struggling to deliver. With the gradual incremental growth that they have, the service levels will never catch up with the incidence of new cases resulting in an ever increasing backlog. In order to address this situation, two years ago Aravind embarked on a new strategy of partnering in developing and managing hospitals in such areas of need, as a strategy towards impacting the problem of blindness and achieving its goal of a million surgeries a year.
The opportunity came almost immediately leading to a partnership with Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Through this partnership the Indira Gandhi Eye Hospital and Research Centre was established in Munshiganj, a small village near the town of Amethi in the state of Uttar Pradesh in North India. In 2006-07, the first full year of operation, the hospital performed over 10,000 eye surgeries making it the largest provider of eye care in the entire state which has a population of 180 million. In spite of 70% paying a steeply subsidized rate, the hospital became financially viable from its third month of operation. This initial experiment in a rural village of Uttar Pradesh stands a strong testimony to the replication of the Aravind Model. It demonstrates the vital role that both the work systems and culture play a role far greater than that of mere name branding. It also demonstrates that even in an economically very poor and under developed area it is possible to offer high quality eye care to all in a financially sustainable manner. Armed with this experience and confidence, a blue print for further expansion in Uttar Pradesh, in the cities of Lucknow and Allahabad, has been developed.
Simultaneously the engagement with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammed Yunus has resulted in concrete plans for establishing two eye hospitals in Bangladesh at Barisal and Bogra. The staff members for these two hospitals were handpicked from Bangladesh and are undergoing training in Madurai both in the science of eye care and in the art of providing it with compassion. A similar project is underway in Amreli in Gujarat in collaboration with Nagardas Dhanji Sanghvi Trust.

Google Expertise for Aravind

Mr. Larry Page with the Aravind IT team
Google Co-founder and President (Products), Larry Page, and Dr. Larry Brilliant, Google Foundation’s Executive Director and friend of the Aravind family since inception, came to Aravind in August to pay tributes to Dr. V, see the work he left behind and explore how Google’s expertise can help support Aravind’s mission of eliminating needless blindness. Google Foundation’s purpose is to leverage parent company Google’s technical expertise for social causes. In this context several ideas were discussed for potential collaboration.

Laying the Foundation

At the foundation stone laying ceremony
On January 5, 2007 His Excellency Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India laid the foundation stone for Dr. G. Venkataswamy Eye Research Institute at the site of the planned building, across the street from Aravind Eye Hospital-Madurai. Mr. Thangam Thennarasu, Hon. State Education Minister, Dr. T. Ramasamy, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Dr. Lloyd Paul Aiello, Director, Beetham Eye Institute, Boston, USA, and Mr. Dilip Sanghvi, Managing Director, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Mumbai graced the occasion as guest-dignitaries.
Addressing the gathering of reputed scientists, doctors and citizens of Madurai, the
President emphasised that complete vision is the mission that should be taken up by all those engaged in the task of eradicating needless blindness. It was indeed the lifetime mission of
Dr. G. Venkataswamy, the President remarked. He said that the Institute will be a most fitting tribute for the noble soul who had relentlessly worked for giving light to the sightless people.

National Honour conferred

Dr. P. Namperumalsamy, Chairman of Aravind Eye Care System has been conferred with the Padma Shree Award for the year 2007. In recognition of his illustrious contribution to the cause of eliminating needless blindness, he was presented the award on March 23 at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan in New Delhi.

"The award has cast on us an added responsibility to further enhance and extend our efforts to carry forward the mission set by Dr. V. This will infuse in us a new zeal and invigorate us to move ahead with unswerving determination for realizing Dr.V’s vision of establishing a blind-free world”.
- Dr. P. Namperumalsamy

That More May See: Growing Patient of Numbers

The core activities of patient care and training continue to grow. In the period covered by this report (January 2006-March 2007), including the work done in the Managed Eye Hospitals, a total of 2,870,682 outpatients were examined and 333,744 surgeries and laser procedures were performed. The training activities continue to expand with an increasing emphasis on development of eye care teams. During the year, several teams were trained to provide paediatric eye care and diabetic retinopathy services in addition to the ongoing activities and overall capacity building.
Several initiatives got underway during the year such as bringing out a series on “Management in Eye Care”, web-based distance learning, and a new course on Project Management. In addition the routine activity of capacity building for hospitals and several management training courses were conducted.
In this time of exciting growth and intense activity, Aravind constantly faces new challenges and myriad opportunities to deepen its understanding of the pivotal roles it plays locally and globally. Standing on the extraordinary platform built over a lifetime by its beloved founder Dr V, it is poised to take on these challenges with reinforced strength, humility and gratitude for its partners in service around the world.

Top

<<prev Next>>

Activity Report, 2006-07