Our CauseGlobally, at least 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment or blindness, of which at least 1 billion cases of vision impairment could have been prevented or are yet to be addressed. Nearly 30% of the world’s blind and vision-impaired live in South East Asia. (WHO, World Sight Day statement). Nearly 40 million people in India, including 1.6 million children, are blind or visually impaired. (The Tribune)
Fortunately, nearly 80% of them can easily be cured if they can receive proper treatment.
Journey to Becoming the World’s Largest Free Eye Care Provider
Sankara Eye Foundation’s journey began in 1998 with one hospital in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, providing free eye care, to currently being the world’s largest free eye care provider. With a powerful network of 22 hospitals in 14 states, Sankara Eye Foundation is on a mission to help eliminate curable blindness among India’s underprivileged population.
Our network of hospitals, some of which are financially self-sufficient, serves the states of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and West Bengal. Currently, our network of hospitals has a total capacity for 485,400 free eye surgeries, annually. We aim to deliver 330,000+ free eye surgeries this fiscal year.
We are at an Inflection Point
Sankara Eye Foundation is currently at an inflection point with several key capacity-building infrastructure projects underway. To fulfill our Vision 2030: March to a Million goals, we aim to raise $80 Million by 2030 to support our infrastructure expansion projects and an additional $80 Million for eye surgeries. We propose to do that by building new hospitals and expanding the capacity of the existing hospitals.
These are the projects currently underway:
Sankara Eye Hospital, Varanasi: This is a new hospital construction project, 50% supported by a bequest made by the Late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala; expected to be completed by December 2023.
Sankara Eye Hospital, Guntur: Major expansion of existing hospital infrastructure to double the free eye surgery capacity to 60,000 per year.
Sankara Eye Hospital, Kanpur: Major expansion of existing hospital infrastructure to double the free eye surgery capacity to 60,000 per year.
Vision 2030 Projects - Future Projects
Sankara Eye Hospital (New location)
Trilochan Netralaya, Odisha (Expansion)
Netaji Eye Hospital, West Bengal (Expansion)
Kalyanam Karoti, Uttar Pradesh (Expansion)
Akhand Jyoti, Bihar (Expansion)
H V Desai, Maharashtra
March to a Million: Key Milestones
To sustainably scale up to providing 1 million plus free eye surgeries annually, we need to:
Build capacity for both free and paid surgeries.
Establish superlative care quality and cost efficiency.
Drive sustainability by attracting more paid patients who subsidize costs for free patients. This can be done by being the preferred choice for quality ophthalmologic care.
Give the Gift of Vision and Change Lives.
Sankara Eye Foundation’s key outreach program in the rural areas, Gift Of Vision, conducts diagnostic eye camps which are pivotal to reaching out to the needy patient population. In 2021-22, 1485 eye camps were conducted all over India. In 2022-23, the goal is to conduct 2760 eye camps.
We are grateful to our 60,000+ generous donors, 1000+ Sankara Eye Foundation volunteers, 1000+ Sankara Eye Hospitals staff and doctors, and 1000+ partner hospital staff and doctors who have brought us so far and continue to join forces with us in our March to a Million free eye surgeries.
Your generous support will go a long way in changing the lives of the underprivileged in India.
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