Outline

There are 12 million people blind in India. Every third blind person in the world is an Indian. These statistics have no impact on us nowadays as we are constantly bombarded with large figures everyday. It is only when it happens to someone close to us that we realise the predicament. People do not go blind in numbers – they go blind individually – each one in their own home among loved ones.

In India the tragedy is that 80% of the blindness is either curable or avoidable. Also while a majority of the population lives in rural areas, the services are located in urban cities.

It was with this understanding and vision that in 1980, the late Dr. R.K. Seth, formed Venu Charitable Society of which Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre is a constituent unit. For the last 25 years Venu has been providing qualitative and quantitative eye care in and around Delhi. The basic objective of Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre is to take quality eyecare to the doorstep of the visually-afflicted, the majority of whom live below the poverty line in the urban slums and the rural areas of India. In addition, we at Venu also aim to bring within the reach of these people, who were often victim of curable or preventable blindness, some of the most sophisticated diagnostic and surgical facilities in the Capital.

Venu delivers its services to the poor and needy through a 3-Tier Eye Care Network, which now comprises:

• 20-24 primary mobile eyecare clinics. Venu’s Community Based Rehabilitation programme is a very strong component of the primary level work, which the organisation has undertaken. The trainings that are imparted to the community level workers and field workers for these programmes mostly happen at the satellite hospitals. Venu has already rehabilitated over 3000 people with not just vision impairment but also hearing and locomotor impairment.
• Six satellite hospitals located at village Dhankot (Ditrict Gurgaon), village Saadat Nagar (District Rewari), Faridabad, Jhajhar, village Jatpura (District Bulandshahr) and village Sherpur (District Sawai Madhopur); and a soon to be set up satellite hospital in Ramnagar, District Nainital, Uttaranchal.
• A tertiary centre at a state-of-the-art base hospital in South Delhi, the nerve centre of the entire organisation: The Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre.