A visionary who made a difference

CHENNAI: At 58, Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy, or Dr V as he is known, founded an 11-bed eye clinic in Madurai in 1976. The mission was to eliminate curable blindness. Thirty five years later, Aravind Eye Care System has treated more than 32 million patients and performed more than four million surgeries, a majority of which were either ultra subsidised or free. The case study was made mandatory reading for MBA students at the Harvard Business School, USA. It won the Gates Award for Global Health in 2008 and the Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2010. This week, a book on the life of Dr V and his successful project Aravind was launched at Landmark, Apex Plaza. Pavithra K Mehta, grand niece of Dr V, along with Suchitra Shenoy, penned the book Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion, Pavithra said, “Dr V or Dr Thatha (as called by the third generation of his family) was definitely spiritual to start the clinic at 58. It has touched many lives. In a way, it was revolutionary. Aravind Eye Care System treated more than a third of its patients for free and it insisted on being financially self-reliant. At Aravind, a barefoot farmer can choose to pay for surgery, while the man destined to be the president of India can opt to receive high-quality treatment for free.”Initially, although treatment was free, it was unavailable to those living in villages.  According to Pavithra, Dr V once spoke to a blind beggar who said that just getting to the clinic would cost close to `200, making the trip near impossible. This, Pavithra said, ignited the need to reach out  to villagers who were too poor to seek out eye care and hence, eye camps from Aravind made rapid progress.Not only did Aravind provide quality eye surgeries, it also made intraocular lens implants available at affordable rates. “Aravind set up its own internationally certified manufacturing facility for this lens, which saw its prices drop from $150 (Rs 7,500) to $10 ( Rs 500),” said Pavithra. Today, there are five eye hospitals and Aravind surgeons average 2,000 cataract surgeries a year. All credit goes to Dr V, whose fingers were permanently twisted and frozen out of shape due to a crippling disease as a young surgeon. He, however, went on to perform more than a lakh sight-restoring surgeries and started Aravind to eliminate curable blindness. Dr V died in 2006, but Aravind continues to work on its mission, thanks to a 3,200-person team, including 21 ophthalmologists across three generations from his family. Pavithra is an exception, but she continues to do her bit for Aravind, as 100 per cent of the author’s royalties for Infinite Vision will be gifted to the Aravind Eye Care System.