There are about 15 million blind people in India. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are the most affected states. The count of blind people in Bihar is approximately 700,000, and 4.3 million are visually impaired. 100,000 additional people become blind every year due to ageing. More than 80% of blind people suffer from cataracts as the main cause of blindness.
As we all know, Bihar has a mostly illiterate population. Bihar is India’s most densely populated state with lowest GDP per capita and least literate state. Many patients remain unaware of the fact that they have eye conditions. Also, more than half the population in Bihar does not have access to any proper eye care facility due to lack of eye hospital, eye clinic, ophthalmologists, eye specialists such as optometrists.
The major reasons they are unable to reach the eye hospitals or clinics in time as there is a lack of eye hospitals, clinics, and poverty.
- Lack of eye care service providers – There are hardly any proper eye care set-ups in the rural hinterlands of Bihar. Patients are required to travel over 100 Km to reach a proper eye care service provider as most hospitals and clinics are concentrated in urban areas, in district towns.
- Poverty – Once a person gets blind, he/she becomes dependent on other family members. Most of the working class belongs to the daily wage earners who hesitate to let go of a day’s income to take their loved ones to hospitals/clinics far away from their homes.
The New Solution is Revolution
Yugrishi Shriram Sharma Acharya Charitable Trust owns and runs Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital. Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital is a non-profit charitable eye hospital in India and one of the most preferred & trusted eye hospitals in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh. Doing over 75,000+ surgeries annually, it stands as the largest eye hospital in Eastern India. The eye hospital’s ultimate goal has been to raise people’s standard of living and assist the community in overcoming social, financial, and mental obstacles and ushering in advancement. The Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital currently operates in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh with 5 hospitals and 35+ eye clinics.
Akhand Jyoti is working towards eliminating curable blindness by providing comprehensive, accessible, high-quality and affordable eye care services to the community. 80% of eye surgeries are provided free of cost to the needy. Sight-restoring surgeries not only restore the sights but also the dignity, hope, and life of the person, as once the sight is restored, the person gets back earning capacity. Akhand Jyoti focuses on needy and underprivileged visually impaired patients to restore their livelihood and alleviate poverty by giving back sight.
Akhand Jyoti is a 500+ bed network eye hospital, operating with 5 hospitals and 35+ eye clinics and best-in-class infrastructure and facilities to cater to the needs of the community. The success rate of sight-restoring surgeries is the highest in the region. Senior eye surgeons have experience of doing over 10,000+ surgeries.
How is Akhand Jyoti Hospital Different?
It is the best eye hospital in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, which offers services to all, regardless of their social and economic background. For last 17 years, Akhand Jyoti has been working towards restoring livelihoods of the poor blind patients by giving back their sight through free-of-cost sight-restoring cataract surgeries which is responsible for over 80% of blindness in the region. Akhand Jyoti also dreams to bring a colourful and bright tomorrow for the children and let them shape their own future by removing their visual impairment. Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital being a charitable eye hospital works towards helping the poor with a mission to eliminate curable blindness from low-income geographies in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The outreach team ventures into the rural hinterlands of Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh to organise eye camps and identify poor and blind patients, bring them to the hospitals in its own transport, operate on them and send them back to their places after the successful sight-restoring cataract surgeries. The entire treatment process is 100% free to the needy.
The hospital through its school-screening programme, screens school-going children to identify children with visual impairment. It is estimated that about 456,000 children in Bihar need vision correction due to refractive problems. Akhand Jyoti provides free prescription spectacles to children suffering from refractive errors to correct their vision and also provides free eye surgeries to children who need surgical interventions.
Akhand Jyoti through its unique and signature ‘Football to Eyeball’ programme, empowers rural underprivileged girls to emerge as gender equality champions in a patriarchal society like Bihar. Needy girls are provided with free-of-cost residential full-time programme to become qualified optometrists and employ them at Akhand Jyoti after the completion of their formal optometry course. Senior girls are given opportunity to opt for management courses from reputed universities in India. Girls play football which boosts their confidence and many girls have already represented Bihar at the national level. Girls after completing their formal optometry course or management course, work at different leadership roles at Akhand Jyoti in different departments, heads the eye clinics as chief optometrists.
Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital focuses in rural areas. The eye hospital runs 5 hospitals and 35+ vision clinics in the region spread across rural hinterlands. The hospital provides comprehensive eye care services such as cataract, glaucoma, retina, squint, amblyopia, etc.
For any query related to eye care services and to book a doctor appointment, please call our helpline 06158-354444.
(Call between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm. The call centre remains closed on Sundays)