LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) completes its 100th corneal transplant in rural centre eye care network.

The transplant was performed last week at its Mudhole secondary eye centre. “This achievement is an example of a “road never travelled,’’ Gullapalli N Rao, Founder and Chairman, LV Prasad Eye Institute said in a release.

“From a situation when I was told to forget corneal transplantation as it is an impossibility in India just about 32 years ago when we founded the LVPEI, we have now achieved this remarkable feat,” Rao added.

The journey of providing complex surgical care right at the doorsteps of rural communities started in March 2016 with the first corneal transplant being performed at the Institute’s Dhulipalla secondary eye centre in Guntur District.

In a span of three years, the secondary centre networks in Mudhole (Nirmal district), Dhullipalla (Guntur district), Venkatachalam (Nellore district) and Paloncha (Bhadradri Kothagudem district) have collectively performed a hundred corneal transplants.

In 2015, LVPEI had become the first single institute in the world to achieve 20,000 corneal transplants across its network.

India is home to half of the world’s blind population. Out of the 15 million blind people in the country, 6.8 million are victims of corneal blindness and this number is expected to rise to 10.6 million by 2020. In India, where poverty is still widespread, corneal blindness is most often found in underprivileged and underserved population.