WHO WE ARE?
One-third of the world’s blind live in India. The prevalence of blindness among the general population in Maharashtra state is reported as 3.5% in year 2005. There are many cases of undiscovered eye-diseases in the country. 40 million are visually handicapped,12 million are totally blind, “The irony is 80% of them, are either preventable or curable. They are needlessly blind; this is where we come into the picture.” To serve the people of Maharashtra, Rural and Urban, by establishing a not for profit Super Specialty Eye Hospital.
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who is commonly referred to as India’s Warren Buffett, is keen to give back to the society by constructing a free eye-care hospital, joined hands with Dr. R.V. Ramani of Sankara Eye Foundation, India along with other like minded people formed R.Jhunjhunwala Sankara Eye Hospital Trust (RJSEHT) for serving the community.
Through RJSEHT, a 100 bedded exclusive Eye Hospital was established in Panvel. In its full capacity, the Hospital will perform 10,000 free eye surgeries annually, for patients primarily from the surrounding villages – Rural Maharashtra. Every year one lakh school children will be screened for undetected visual defects, free of cost and advised corrective measures. Eye Donation and Corneal transplantation will be promoted. Diabetic Retinopathy programme for Rural Maharashtra would be established. Human Resource Development in Community Eye Care would be put in place to provide job-oriented and job-guaranteed vocational training for rural women.
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Non-availability & non-affordability are the main reasons why there is a lack of quality eye care in rural India. We thus follow the 80:20 Model– 20% of the total surgeries will be for the affordable public who can pay and 80% of the total surgeries will be for the economically weaker sections which will be totally free of cost. The revenue generated from the 20% surgeries will subsidize the cost of surgeries for the 80% free. The momentum of this vision is taken forward by the benevolent support of those who contribute financially to Sankara in various capacities. This goes towards our mission of providing affordable quality eye care services.