This is a remarkable philanthropic initiative of Ekam Foundation and Sweekriti Sociocare Foundation, established to provide high-quality eye care to people who have traditionally faced barriers to accessing treatment. Inaugurated on 21 May 2026, the event brought together partners, donors, healthcare professionals and community leaders who shared a common vision: eliminating avoidable blindness through sustainable, people-centred eye care. 

A Shared Vision Beyond Infrastructure 

Operation Eyesight was honoured to be recognized during the inauguration for its contribution as a technical knowledge partner in shaping the hospital’s long-term vision. 

Our role extends beyond supporting the establishment of a healthcare facility. By sharing our decades of experience in community eye health, along with technical guidance from our long-standing partner, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, we are helping lay the foundation for a sustainable eye health ecosystem that reaches people where they live. 

The Chaitanyam Eye Care Institute has been designed to perform approximately 4,000 free cataract surgeries every year, serving communities across Kolhapur and neighbouring districts. Equipped with modern infrastructure and advanced ophthalmic equipment made possible through generous philanthropic support, the hospital is well positioned to deliver high-quality clinical care for years to come. 

Building an Eye Health Ecosystem 

A modern hospital alone cannot eliminate avoidable blindness. Many people living in rural communities continue to face challenges related to awareness, affordability and accessibility. Unless these barriers are addressed, countless individuals will remain untreated despite the availability of excellent clinical services. 

This is where Operation Eyesight’s proven, decades-long Community Eye Health Model becomes critical. Rather than waiting for patients to seek care, the model takes eye care into the community—proactively identifying people with vision problems, creating awareness, and connecting them to timely diagnosis and treatment. By seamlessly integrating community outreach, primary eye care through Vision Centres, and specialized hospital services, it ensures a continuous continuum of care that is accessible, equitable, and sustainable. 

The model is built around three interconnected pillars: 

• Community eye care: Trained community health workers engage directly with villages through door-to-door visits, awareness programmes and vision screening activities, ensuring early detection and timely referral. 

• Quality Clinical Care: Patients identified through community outreach are connected to Vision Centres and, when required, referred to the base hospital for advanced diagnosis and treatment. Continuous knowledge sharing and capacity building help maintain high clinical standards. 

• Sustainable Community Ownership: Lasting impact requires strong community participation and institutional support. Community-based action groups help build local ownership, promote awareness, and encourage timely care-seeking behaviour. At the same time, collaboration with government health programmes and public health departments strengthens referrals, resource convergence, and service delivery, ensuring that quality eye care remains accessible and sustainable for the communities the hospital serves. 

Looking Ahead 

The inauguration of Chaitanyam Eye Care Institute is not the culmination of a project, it is the beginning of a long-term partnership to strengthen community eye health across rural Maharashtra. 

Together with Ekam Foundation, Sweekriti Sociocare Foundation, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute and local stakeholders, Operation Eyesight looks forward to supporting the implementation of the  Community Eye Health models, creating a sustainable system that reaches underserved communities, prevents avoidable blindness and restores vision for thousands of people every year. 

Because lasting impact is achieved not simply by building hospitals, but by building systems that ensure every individual has the opportunity to see a brighter future. 

The post Chaitanyam Eye Care Institute Opens in Rural Maharashtra  appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

In the remote hills of Arunachal Pradesh, losing sight has often meant losing much more than vision. 
 
For many older adults, blurred vision gradually becomes darkness. Reading prayers becomes impossible. Walking independently becomes difficult. Farming, weaving, cooking, and caring for grandchildren become daily struggles. Families quietly adapt, believing blindness is simply a part of growing old. 
 
But blindness caused by cataract is not inevitable. It is treatable. 
 
The challenge is ensuring that every person who needs care is identified, reaches treatment in time, and receives the support to regain their sight. 
 
That challenge has now been met in Miao Block of Changlang District, Arunachal Pradesh, officially declared Cataract Blindness Backlog-Free (CBBF) in June 2026. For Operation Eyesight, this achievement proves that when communities, governments and technical partners work together, eliminating avoidable blindness becomes an achievable reality. 

The Real Challenge Was Never Just Cataract 

Cataract remains one of the leading causes of avoidable blindness worldwide. While surgery is highly effective, thousands continue to live with unnecessary blindness because services fail to reach them in time. 
 
Distance, lack of awareness, fear of surgery, weak referral systems, financial hardship and difficult terrain often prevent people from receiving timely care. The real challenge is ensuring that no one who needs surgery is left behind. 

A Different Way of Thinking About Eye Care 

Operation Eyesight’s Integrated People-Centred Eye Care (IPEC) model strengthens primary healthcare rather than creating parallel systems. It integrates community awareness, household screening, referral pathways, diagnosis, surgery, follow-up and long-term surveillance into one connected continuum of care. 

A Four-Year Journey Built on Partnership 

Beginning in 2021, Operation Eyesight partnered with the Government of Arunachal Pradesh to strengthen existing government eye care services. Infrastructure, referral systems, frontline worker capacity and community awareness were all strengthened to make quality eye care accessible closer to home. 

Finding Every Person Who Needed Care 

Teams travelled village by village and house by house. Behind every statistic was a conversation with a family, counselling for an elderly patient, or support for someone who believed blindness was an unavoidable part of ageing. 

Achievements included:  
• 76 villages covered 
• 5,600+ households visited 
• Nearly 26,000 people enumerated 
• More than 26,700 people screened 
• 283 cataract patients identified. 

The Final Mile Was the Most Important 

Declaring a block Cataract Blindness Backlog-Free requires far more than performing surgeries. Every identified patient must be treated, medically certified if surgery is not possible, or documented after informed refusal. Households are revisited, outcomes verified and records validated before declaration. 

Strengthening Systems That Will Last 

Operation Eyesight supported health system strengthening through capacity building, referral systems, operating theatre support, community mobilisation, household validation and documentation. The goal was to leave behind stronger government systems capable of sustaining quality eye care. 

Why This Milestone Matters Beyond Miao 

For families, it means restored independence and renewed hope. For the Government, it demonstrates the power of integrating eye care into public health systems. For Operation Eyesight, it validates the IPEC approach and provides lessons that will strengthen programmes across India and beyond. 

A Milestone That Inspires the Journey Ahead 

While Miao’s declaration marks a historic milestone, it is by no means the end of the journey. Instead, it serves as a powerful demonstration of what is possible when governments, communities, and technical partners work together with a shared vision. 

Encouraged by the success in Miao, the Government of Arunachal Pradesh and Operation Eyesight are continuing to strengthen Integrated People-Centred Eye Care across other districts of the state. By building the capacity of primary healthcare facilities, strengthening referral pathways, supporting Vision Points, training frontline health workers, and empowering communities through awareness and early detection, the programme is laying the foundation for more blocks to achieve Cataract Blindness Backlog-Free status in the coming years. 

A similar transformation is also underway in Madhya Pradesh, where Operation Eyesight is working closely with the state health system to integrate eye care into primary healthcare through its Integrated People-Centred Eye Care (IPEC) model. Across multiple districts, the programme is strengthening primary health facilities, expanding community-based screening, improving referral systems, building the capacity of healthcare providers, and ensuring that people receive timely diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care. 

Rather than focusing solely on increasing the number of surgeries, these programmes are creating resilient eye health systems capable of continuously identifying, treating, and preventing avoidable blindness within communities. This shift from episodic interventions to sustainable systems strengthening is central to Operation Eyesight’s long-term vision. 

Miao has shown that eliminating avoidable blindness is not the result of a single intervention; it is the outcome of sustained partnerships, empowered communities, and resilient public health systems. As this approach continues to expand across Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and beyond, Operation Eyesight remains committed to working alongside governments and communities to ensure that quality eye care reaches everyone, everywhere. 

Because restoring sight changes one life. 

Building stronger health systems changes the future of entire generations.

The post Miao Block Declared Cataract Blindness Backlog-Free appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

World Prematurity Day: Dr. Ashi Khurana, Vice-Chairman, C.L. Gupta Eye Institute on preventing blindness in premature infants

An eye condition that is all but invisible to parents, pediatricians and the community can silently rob premature and low-weight infants of their sight. The condition must be treated early or the infant can go blind, not as a baby, but years later as a child. The condition is called Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), and in 2016, it became all too visible to eye doctors at C. L. Gupta Eye Institute.

Dr. Khurana remembers a doctor coming to her and being “very concerned as they found that a lot of children were coming in and had gone blind due to ROP.” It was a major problem that no other organization was addressing. ROP can be treated but it requires screening, diagnosis and urgent treatment that can include injections and laser eye surgery.

However, there was no widespread public health initiative to address ROP. Dr. Khurana and her team saw the shadow that blindness from ROP caused on children, their families, the health care system and society. Though a small number of babies develop ROP and lose their sight, “there is a huge impact on the life of that child and their family because someone, often the mother, becomes the caregiver.” There is a direct impact on the mental, physical and financial resources in a family, she says. Later treatment is also often complex, intensive and has poor outcomes. “It is very frustrating as a doctor,” says Dr. Khurana, “when there is not much you can do for a condition that could have been prevented.”

Conditions impacting premature infants, such as ROP, are on the rise

Premature births are a global issue. The World Health Organization data from 2020 estimates that 13.4 million babies, or one in 10, were born premature.

India has the highest prevalence of premature births in the world. Data from the Lancet found that three million premature babies were born in India in 2020.

The emergence of local NICUs has greatly increased the survival rate of premature infants. This has led to a shift from survival to quality of life by addressing the complications of prematurity. “ROP is a modern disease as more babies survive due to high quality NICUs,” Dr. Khurana says.

Conditions of Premature Infants on the Rise

To address the growing need and fill the gap in service, Dr. Khurana and her team launched an ROP screening program in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. Initially it was a pilot and then it expanded to include a partnership with Operation Eyesight Universal and was called the Retinopathy of Prematurity Eradication Project.  

On a mission to raise awareness and start screening for ROP

At that time, Dr. Khurana remembers that C. L. Gupta Eye Institute was not getting a lot of referrals from pediatricians to screen the eyes of premature infants for ROP. She knew that they needed to start an awareness campaign to educate doctors and pediatricians about ROP and the need to screen. “It should just happen, like a vaccine,” Dr. Khurana says.

The team started knocking on doors and going into NICUs to talk to not only doctors but also NICU managers and nurses, who are often the ones responsible for requesting ROP screenings.

Screening requires specialists and equipment often found in an eye hospital. As premature infants cannot travel and spend their first few weeks in emerging NICUs, the screening needs to take place there. However, many of the infants are fighting for their lives. “They have a lot of complications and there is a lot of priorities for doctors and stress for families,” Dr. Khurana says. “And then with all that, this issue of blindness comes up.”

There are also a limited number of eye doctors, and it can be challenging for them to travel to multiple NICUs to screen premature infants “who may or may not have an eye problem.”

An ambitious screening goal

The initial goal was to screen 500 children “which was huge,” Dr, Khurana says. To achieve this they sent optometrists to screen premature infants for ROP regularly at 40 local NICUs. Infants with ROP were referred to C. L. Gupta Eye Institute for urgent treatment.

In the first phase, the team screened 464 premature infants and saved 50 children from blindness. “It has been very satisfying for our doctors,” Dr. Khurana says.

In addition to raising awareness among medical staff, Dr. Khurana’s team started to educate the community as well. Not all parents are able to understand why screening and treatment are needed. There can be literacy and poverty issues that need to be addressed and at times, parents may deny treatment. Gender can be a factor as can birth order, if there are many children in the family.

People who can pay do, those who can pay part of the cost contribute what they can and those who cannot pay are supported by Operation Eyesight Universal. In this way, “everyone receives care and treatment.”

The second phase of the project launched on July 16, 2024, expanding beyond Moradabad to Sambhal, Bijnor, Amroha, Rampur and Baduan. Reaching these semi-urban areas was possible due to a mobile van with the required equipment, made possible through the Rotary Foundation, for onsite screening and treatment in rural and underserved areas, a tele-ophthalmology platform that allows experts to provide remote consultations, diagnoses, and treatment recommendations, an expanded network of neo-natal intensive care units in the five new regions and continued medical education to raise awareness of ROP, capacity and skills of NICU staff in the additional districts.

In December 2024, the Retinopathy of Prematurity Eradication Project ends. Services will be maintained with C. L. Gupta Eye Institute, a non-profit, covering costs for those who cannot pay, and working with NICUs.

ROP is a modern disease that requires resources

ROP is being studied and the ROP Society of India is looking at the impact of the condition on the country. As more NICUs emerge and more premature infants survive, ROP is appearing more frequently.   

Now, Dr. Khurana and her team are working to raise awareness of ROP in the community, among parents and with medical professionals. What is needed is more resources, public health support and training for doctors.  

For now, her team is small but dedicated. “It is satisfying for us to make a difference in the lives of these children and families,” she says.  

For the premature infants and their families in and around Moradabad, there is hope of a bright future. 

Learn about Baby Aarsh, who was a beneficiary of ROP treatment in this program and the impact of this treatment on his life and the life of his family.

Watch our video about the Retinopathy of Prematurity project at the C. L. Gupta Eye Institute:

The post Preventing blindness in premature infants with Dr. Ashi Khurana appeared first on Operation Eyesight.

This makes medical care difficult to access, especially for seniors like Gadami.

For six years, the grandmother lived with cataracts in both eyes. As her vision worsened, she became reliant on family members to help with even simple tasks.

“There was no doctor, no eye camp, nothing,” says our Program Manager Tapobrat Bhuyan, describing the community when he first visited it in 2021.

When community health volunteer, Dipen, met Gadami during a door-to-door screening, he referred her to a nearby eye camp. There, she was diagnosed with bilateral cataracts, and agreed to make the long journey to Jorhat, where she received sight-restoring surgery at our partner hospital, Chandraprabha Eye Hospital, free of charge.

Gadami’s granddaughter, Junu, was by her side to comfort her during the hospital stay and share in her joy when the bandages came off.

Back in Kachikata, Gadami’s world has opened up. With her independence restored, she can once again walk around the village, visit friends and fully enjoy her time with her grandchildren.

Watch a video about our work on Majuli Island!

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