RAHUL Kaushal, a 24-year-old student of Mass Communication, ran out of luck even after his death. A victim of ragging, Rahul had pledged to donate his eyes. But he couldn’t do so, for there was no eye donation cell in the eye-care hospital located in his village in Haryana.
Three months down the line, the same 30-bed satellite hospital in Sadat Nagar, a village in the interiors of Rewari district, now has a 24 hour Eye Donation Centre.
The centre was inaugurated by former cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi who, along with his family, is also a designated ‘Sight Ambassador’ for Venu Charitable Society, which runs the hospital.
The Bhagwan Kaur Eye Centre is one of the seven satellite hospitals run by the society. The hospitals are located within a radius of 200 km of Delhi. The charitable centre, which started off in 1999, has already benefitted nearly 75,000 villagers.
‘‘We had started as a bi-weekly mobile clinic service in 1993 in the district of Rewari and nearby areas since there were hardly any eye care services available. As the volume of patients increased, we decided to build a fully-equipped centre for the convenience of the villagers,’’ said Dr Anil Tara, a senior eye specialist and a long-time associate of Venu.
Interestingly, the land for the satellite hospital was donated by a family of Sadat Nagar which has had all its menfolk fight in all the wars in the last century — from World War I to the Kargil conflict.
The centre runs a host of programmes for the villagers and is manned by a team of 13 workers including two resident doctors.
Team head Dr Abhishek Vajpayee, who has been living in the village with his family for over a year now, is only too glad to share some of the achievements of the hospital.
‘‘We were the first to start a community-based rehabilitation programme. So far, we have rehabilitated 743 incurable visually impaired persons after screening nearly six lakh people. Today, the centre can handle 98 per cent of the eye complications arising in this vast region,’’ he says with a content smile.
The credit for rehabilitating 16 children also goes to this small eye hospital. Under its integrated education programme, it secured admission for the visually impaired children in the regular schools and also provided them with special teachers for assistance.
The centre will soon extend its capacity to 45 beds after it recently added a paediatric clinic to its already existing services.