By Tripti Pal | Project Leader
The magnitude of the problem of blindness in the developing world is staggering. Most developing countries are now challenged with a huge backlog of blinded citizens. India has perhaps the largest blind and potentially blind population in the world. This is due to poverty, lack of awareness and unavailability of medical services in the rural India. The social and financial hardships created by blindness gravely affect individuals and families, in particular, and the nation at large.
In 1982, Ishwar Charitable Trust was established with the paltry amount left upon the demise of Dr. Sushil Choudhry’s mother. The Ishwar Charitable Trust was set up with the aim to provide affordable, preventable, curative and quality ophthalmic care to all sections of the community particularly the rural needy.
The Trust, understanding the limitations of the rural poor, an effective and unique Rural Outreach Programme was designed in 1993 for providing modern ophthalmic services at the very doorstep of rural population covering the states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and the slum areas of Delhi. Operating on a hub and spoke model – screening and collecting patients requiring surgery from remote Rural Peripheral Centers (RPC’s) and urban slums, bringing them to the base hospital (in NOIDA and Greater NOIDA) and providing them high quality diagnostic, surgical and post operative care at no charge.
ICARE conducts the largest number of ocular surgeries in Uttar Pradesh and is one of the largest hospitals in northern India to do so. Over the last 24 years the hospital has screened 34.77 lakhs and restored eye sight of 2.63 lakhs patients. Out of these total numbers almost 70 percent of work is for Charity. This year ICARE conducted over 2,00,000 screenings and performed approximately 24000 surgeries of which over 15,000 (nearly 65%) were charitable in nature, making it an organization with the largest proportion of charity compared to any other ophthalmic non government hospitals.
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