Aravind Eye Hospitals is a hospital chain in India. It was founded by Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (popularly known as Dr.V) at Madurai, Tamil Nadu in 1976. It has grown into a network of eye hospitals and has had a major impact in eradicating cataract related blindness in India. As of 2012, Aravind has treated nearly 32 million patients and performed 4 million surgeries. The model of Aravind Eye Care hospitals has been applauded and has become a subject for numerous case studies across the world.
Video Aravind Eye Hospitals
History
Cataracts are a major source of blindness in India, with at least 4 million cases reported every year, contributing to nearly to a quarter of the world's blind. Cataract related blindness can be avoided by timely intervention and surgery.
Maps Aravind Eye Hospitals
The Aravind Model
Dr. V's vision was to eradicate needless blindness in India. Dr. V. wanted to emulate the service efficiency of McDonald's fast food and sought to adapt it to the eye care system to cope with increasing the numbers of patients treated. Aravind began performing surgeries on a large scale with treatment being free or heavily subsidized for the poor cross subsidized by the paying patients. Aravind established an outreach program wherein doctors reach out to remote villages to conduct eye camps sponsored by various organizations like Sathya Sai Organization, Lions Clubs International and Rotary International. The organizations take care of the costs of the camp, transporting the patients to surgery and their rehabilitation while Aravind does the surgery free of cost. Aravind started performing 5 times the number of cataract surgeries that were performed in the entire country and 16 times more than that of the entire U.S.
Aravind focused on rotating doctors between free and paid wards, concentrating on efficiency and hygiene thus eliminating differences between the surgeries done for paid and non-paid patients. The rate of infection in Aravind was about four per thousand surgeries which was significantly lower than the international norm of six per thousand surgeries.
Hospitals and facilities
Aravind Hospital started in 1976 as an 11-bed hospital in Madurai. Aravind opened a hospital in Theni in 1985 and Tirunelveli in 1988. The hospital at Coimbatore was founded in 1997. Aravind later expanded to five more cities in Tamil Nadu including Tirupur, Salem, Dindigul, Thoothukudi, Udumalaipettai and neighboring Pondicherry. Aravind is setting up a hospital in Chennai at a cost of INR 1.4 billion with a capacity to perform 60,000 surgeries a year. The group also has four partnership projects -- with the Rajiv Gandhi Chairtable Trust in Amethi, another in Lucknow, Birla Corporation in Kolkata and Shanghvi Trust in Amreli, Gujarat. Aravind is also setting up its first overseas venture in Nigeria in partnership with Chanrai Group which is expected to be the largest eye-care facility in Africa when it goes operational in 2015 with a capacity to perform 10,000 surgeries annually.
LAICO
Aravind established Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology (LAICO) in association with Lions International in 1992. The institute offers training for hospital administrators, hospital operations managers and other management professionals.
Aravind Eyebank
Aravind has established four eye banks viz. Rotary Aravind International Eye Bank in Madurai in association with Rotary International (1998), Aravind - IOB Eye bank in Coimbatore in association with Indian Overseas Bank (1998), Rotary Aravind Eye Bank in Tirunelveli in association with Rotary International (2004) and Aravind Eye Bank Association in Puducherry (2005).
Awards and recognition
- Gates Award for Global Health (2008)
- Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize (2010)
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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