An Indian eye care institution is celebrating its one millionth free eye surgery with a special ceremony on Thursday at the Churchill Dining room in the House of Commons. NRI Punjabi MP Virendra Sharma, who represents the Ealing Southall constituency in UK Parliament, has agreed to preside over the occasion.

Founded by a husband and wife doctor team from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, Dr RV Ramani and Dr RadahaRamani, the Sankara Eye Foundation has branches both in the US and the UK.

It currently consists of 11 eye hospitals, 125 doctors and 600 paramedical professionals who have affected the lives of some 40 million people in the past 35 years. They operate in Punjab and 10 other states, including Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, AP, Uttarakhand and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

Sankara prides itself as the only global organisation working on 80:20 ratio, where 80 per cent of the beneficiaries are the rural poor who receive their treatment totally free while the remaining 20 per cent are from affluent families who pay for the services, effectively cross subsidising the free eye care services.

“Community eye care is the thrust of the activity, which is providing high quality, cost effective and readily available eye care at the doorstep of rural India”, says a spokesman for Sankara. “Highly successful eye banking, Gift of Vision rural outreach eye care programme for the villagers, Rainbow preventive eye care programme for schoolchildren and Diabetic Retinopathy for rural India, apart from Vandematharam for freedom fighters and Irul Neeki for tribals, are some of the result-oriented ongoing services of Sankara.

The one millionth beneficiary of Sankara’s dedicated work is a 35-year-old mother from Tamil Nadu. Ms Shanthi from Ponnammapettai village in Salem district has the additional responsibility of eking out a living by running a handloom because her husband is a physically challenged.

Commenting on Sankara’s work, founder and managing trustee Dr RV Ramani said: “Sankara has come a long way in this journey and today it is a huge banyan tree giving benefits to thousands of people….It performs over 500 free eye surgeries every day and has an ambitious goal of replicating one such hospital in every state of India with the ultimate objective of providing Vision 20/20 for all by the year 2020.”