Ten years ago, when the Sankara Eye Care Institutions, which has 130 eye surgeons, celebrated its silver jubilee, “we decided to share our experience with other States. When all our hospitals are in place (more are coming up at UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh), we want to reach one million underprivileged beneficiaries every year compared to the 1.5 lakh a year now,” says Managing Trustee Dr R.V.Ramani. Long ago he decided he had to go beyond district headquarters and reach large industrial houses as well as influential NRIs. Not only has he managed to get some of his friends in the US to start a Sankara Eye Foundation in California in 1998, which, ironically a Pakistani chartered accountant, Ahmad Khushnood, who is on the Board of the Foundation, helped get non-profit status under US law.

Every weekend, 200 couples in the US do voluntary work and raise funds to support the Sankara activities in India. So when he was invited by the Telugu Association of North America to address them 10 year ago, “I challenged them that if 1,000 families of Andhra origin living in the US can donate $1000 each, we can put up such a centre in AP.”

In three months $1 million were raised and with a Sankaracharya devotee donating five acres of land in Guntur, a Sankara eye hospital was opened there. Next the Kannadigas came forward for Karnataka, the Gujaratis for Gujarat and Sankara hospitals were started in Hubli and Anand. And now the Punjabis in London are working for a similar hospital with 225 beds — 25 paid and 200 free — in Punjab. Meanwhile, the cost of setting up a hospital has gone up from $1 to 4 million. The phenomenal work done by this institution has not gone unrecognised and now Dr Ramani is helping to set up similar models in Cambodia, Nepal, Seychelles and Nigeria.

rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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