Dr. P. Namperumalsamy, Chairman, Aravind Eye Care System, while delivering the Champalimaud Award lecture at the ARVO Annual Meeting, highlighted the multifarious contributions of Aravind towards preventing and eliminating needless blindness in India and other developing countries in the globe.
The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) is the world’s largest and most respected eye and vision research organisation with 12000 researchers from 73 countries as its members. ARVO encourages and assists research, training, publication and knowledge-sharing in vision and ophthalmology. The Association’s Annual Meeting for 2008 was held at Fort Lauderdale, Florida from April 27 to May 1. Dr. G. Natchiar, Vice-Chairman, Dr. M. Srinivasan, Dr. R. Ramakrishnan, Dr. Kim, Dr. Usha, Dr. Muthukaruppan, Dr. Sundaresan, Dr. Thiruvenkatam and Dr. Parag attended the meeting along with Dr. P.N.
Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award which carries with it a cash prize of 1 million Euro (approximately Rs. 5.5 crores) has been instituted in the year 2007 by Champalimaud Foundation based in Lisbon. The Foundation was created at the bequest of the late Antonio de Sommer Champalimaud, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist of Portugal. This prestigious annual award is given alternatively between contributions to overall vision research and contributions to the alleviation of visual problems, primarily in developing countries.
Aravind Eye Care System was selected for the inaugural edition of the award for its contributions to the alleviation of visual problems and it was presented to Dr. P. Namperumalsamy in September 2007. ARVO and Champalimaud Foundation have jointly instituted the Champalimaud Lecture as a part of ARVO annual meetings every year. And the first lecture was delivered by Dr. P. Namperumalsamy this year.
In his 25 minute Champalimaud Award Lecture, Dr. P.N. explained to the international audience in detail the role of Aravind Eye Care System as the world’s biggest private eye care provider, the manufacturer of ophthalmic products, the trainer of ophthalmologists, ophthalmic assistants, technicians, administrative and managerial personnel, capacity builder of other eye hospitals and researcher in the causes and treatment of eye diseases. With the mission of eliminating needless blindness by providing compassionate and high quality eye care for all, Aravind is restoring vision to millions, he said.
Dr. P.N. began his lecture with the following observation: “I am very much delighted, honoured and privileged to give this lecture at ARVO to acknowledge the receipt of this prestigious Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award for the year 2007 to Aravind Eye Care System which has got the distinction of being the first awardee. We thank the entire Champalimaud Foundation, family, Secretary and members of the Trust and everyone associated with the selection, for having selected us for this award and the confidence expressed by giving the recognition to our Institution”.
Following is the excerpts from the Chairman’s speech:
“Started as a 11 bed clinic in 1976 with a small team with a big mission, Aravind has now evolved into a world renowned eye care system consisting of 5 Aravind Eye Hospitals, Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology, 3 managed eye hospitals, Aurolab, LAICO, Aravind Medical Research Foundation and Eye Banks.
Community based eye care with modern technology and quality, affordable to all under efficient management systems are Aravind’s core principles in patient centred eye care delivery. Reaching the unreached through eye camps, removing the barriers in accessing eye care facilities and community participation are Aravind’s principles in developing the market.
The innovative I.T. enabled Aravind Vision Centres provide comprehensive primary eye care in rural areas on a permanent basis. These centres provide Tele- consulation facility to the poor villagers who can converse via Internet with the Ophthalmologist in the base hospital and get medical advice.
On every working day, 6000 outpatients are attended and 850 surgeries performed in Aravind Eye Hospitals. Four to five screening eye camps that examine 1500 people and transport 300 patients to the hospitals for surgery are conducted per day. And classes for 100 Residents/Fellows and 300 technicians and administrators are held per day thus making Aravind the largest provider of eye care services and trainer of ophthalmic personnel in the world. From June 1993 to July 2006, Aravind has trained 1274 ophthalmologists from 30 countries to perform IOL/SICS/Phaco surgeries for Cataract patients. 11% of the Indian Ophthalmologists must have had some sort of training at Aravind Eye Hospitals as Residents or as short-term trainees. It trains Residents from the leading US institutions also.
Equipped with a dedicated medical team and well trained paramedical personnel having cultural and spiritual values, Aravind is doing 40% of all cataract surgeries in Tamil Nadu. A Surgeon in Aravind performs more than 2000 cataract surgeries a year which is 5 times the number performed by an average Indian Ophthalmologist. Aravind which has an eye on the quality of its service adopts relevant technologies as early as they are introduced in the world. The system of patient counselling introduced by Aravind informs the patients about the causes and effects of his / her eye disease, the estimated cost of treatment and their likely stay in the hospital. The patients are given postoperative instructions. All these counselling activities ensure patient satisfaction.
Aravind hospitals provide free/subsidised eye care service to 65% of its patients while the remaining 35% pay for the services they receive. While the quality of eye care provided to both free and paying patients are the same, the facilities are different based on the pricing.
During the period April – 2006 to March 2007, the total number of outpatients seen in Aravind Eye Hospitals was 23, 13, 398 and the number of total surgeries being 2, 70,444.
With a view to increase the ophthalmic human resource needed for the mission of eliminating needless blindness, Aravind has established a Virtual Academy that teaches and trains ophthalmologists in medical and surgical procedures of various diseases through tele-education system. Initially it covers Madurai, Tirunelveli, Theni, Coimbatore, and Puducherry Aravind Hospitals where classes for ophthalmologists will be held. This system will be extended to other hospitals in India and abroad in due course.
From the inception of Aravind Eye Care System, the Aravind Medical Research Foundation has been doing field studies, epidemiological surveys, operational research and clinical trials. With the establishment of Dr. G. Venkataswamy Eye Research Institute, a new thrust has been given to research in basic sciences including genetics and proteomics in eye diseases. Aravind has positioned itself in the forefront in eye research in the Indian scenario. We invite all the international research scientists to join hand and collaborate with us in our research activities for preventing and eliminating needless blindness in the world.
The new goals of Aravind include increasing the total number of surgeries from quarter million to one million per annum, establishing more Aravind Hospitals and developing more Aravind managed hospitals and bringing into existence a national and global university of ophthalmic sciences. Presently Aravind is working with Grameen to develop 5 eye hospitals at Bangladesh and has initiated collaborative moves with Chinese eye institutes including Peking University Eye Centre”. At the end, Dr. P. Namperumalsamy said the cash component of the Champalimaud Award will be spent for improving patient care, increase research activities; enhance the services of speciality departments and for teaching and training programmes.
The Chairman concluded his lecture with the words “Much has been done and much remains to be done… Dr. V has shown the way to do it, we will do it, we ‘can do’ it”.