Restoring sight to India’s blind

GOING TO PEOPLE: ARAVIND EYE CARE SYSTEM PERFORMS ABOUT 500 000 SURGERIES A YEAR

Treatment taken to rural areas where it is needed most.

Black ticks on their foreheads marking the eye to be operated on, dozens of patients in green overalls wait in line, beneficiaries of a pioneering Indian model that is restoring sight to millions.

With a highly efficient assembly line model inspired by McDonald’s, the network of hospitals of the Aravind Eye Care System performs around 500 000 surgeries a year – many for free.

More than a quarter of the world’s population, about 2.2 billion people, suffer from vision impairment.

Of which one billion cases could have been prevented or have been left unaddressed, according to the World Vision Report by the World Health Organisation.

There are an estimated 10 million blind people in India, with a

further 50 million suffering from some form of visual impairment. Cataracts – clouding of the eye lens – is the main cause.

“The bulk of this blindness is not necessary because a lot of it

is due to cataract which can be easily set right through a simple surgery,” said Thulasiraj Ravilla, one of the founding members of Aravind.

The hospital was set up by doctor

Govindappa Venkataswamy, who was inspired by McDonald’s ex-chief executive Roy Kroc and learned about the fast-food chain’s economies of scale during a visit to the Hamburger

University in Chicago.

“If McDonald’s can do it for hamburgers, why can’t we do it for eye care?” he famously said.

Aravind started as an 11-bed facility in 1976 in Madurai, a city in the state of Tamil Nadu, but has expanded to care centres and community clinics across India.

The model has been so successful it has been the subject of numerous studies, including by Harvard Business School.

But it is the outreach camps which have been the cornerstone of its no-frills, high-volume work – nearly 70% of India’s population lives in rural areas.

“It is the access that is the main concern, so we are taking the treatment to people rather than waiting for them to come for us,” Ravilla said.

Aravind eye surgeon Aruna Pai said the doctors receive rigorous training to make sure they can perform surgeries quickly.

The complication rate is less than two per 10 000 at Aravind compared to Britain or the United States where it ranges from four to eight per 10 000, according to the hospital.

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