This project will help to build 100 bed free patient ward and additional felicities at Sankara Eye Hospital Guntur, India. This project will help at least give vision to 10,000 poor people in India. Sankara Hospital in Guntur, serves the state of Andhra Pradesh. It was inaugurated with 120 beds in 2004, expanded with additional 100 beds in 2008 and performed over 180,000 free eye surgeries until Jan 2014. The need for expansion is critical as we reach a greater number of patients.
It is estimated that prevalence of blindness is 1% and there are 12 million people suffering from complete blindness in India. Approximately 75% of adult blindness and 50% of childhood blindness is either curable or preventable. The single biggest cause of blindness is cataract which contributes to 50% of the overall burden. The rural poor make up the largest segment of the needlessly blind and over 72% of India's population lives in villages.
Sankara aims to eradicate curable blindness in India by year 2020 by implementing three key concepts that form the basis of services. These include: 1. Comprehensive and compassionate state of the art and free eye care to the rural poor 2. Innovation and continuous improvement is the mantra for cost efficient operation 3. Financial self sufficiency and replication to reach vision 20/20 by year 2020
Sankara to date has conducted 15,094 rural camps, screened 2,737,096 rural patients, and performed 1,000,325 free eye surgeries. Outreach programs deliver free eye surgeries to the poor enabling individuals to reenter the workforce and be contributing members to GDP. Each Sankara hospital aims to become operationally self sufficient within 5 years from establishment. Thousands of kids screened to prevent eye problems every year.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
