Recently we have expanded our services to include chronic diseases like Diabetes. VIIO was conceptulised as a tertiary eye care center based on a model
of "sustainable charity" by the Sri Keshava Trust,a vision centered
NGO. SKT was founded in the year 1988 by Dr KR Murthy, a pioneering
ophthalmologist hailing form a family of ophthalmologists, in fact he
was a third generation eye doctor followin
g his father Dr h
Krishnamoorthy and his grandfather Dr BK Narayan Rao. His life long
dream was to create a center of excellence which would be patient
centered, affordable yet world class. The struggle was long and hard
and in the year 1998 the government of karnataka granted some land on
the out skirts of bangalore for the construction of a specialty eye
care center. from 1988 to 2001, till VIIO was completed, Dr Murthy's
private clinic, the Prabha Eye Clinic and Research center under took
significant amounts of community work on behalf of the SKT. in 2001 an
ultramodern 60,000 sq ft building spread over 5 floors and with the
ability to house 120 in patients at a time was inaugurated. Dr H
Nanjundiah, a management expert and Sri Dhirubhai Sangani an NRI were
the corner stones in this effort. between 1988 and 2001 a rocky hill
was converted into an aesthetically designed hospital with clinical,
teaching and research facilities including a paperless working
environment. Opened in October 2001, the VIIO started offering
services in all sub specialties of eye care besides large scale
cataract work. Parallel efforts were made to raise funds to create
models of outreach covering other centers that were not so well
equipped, VIIO continued to run 5 rural hospitals started by SKT. in
2003 a change in the way of out reach was envisaged as we started
seeing patients with end stage complications of glaucoma and diabetic
retinopathy. Another sad statistic was that many of our pediatric
patients were also seen at a stage where medical interventions were
not possible anymore. Our biggest hurdle was that there were no models
to copy or adopt apart from the camp based screening models that had
been hugely successful earlier. The main challenges were the sensitive
nature of the expensive equipment needed to diagnose and treat these
conditions, lack of training and awareness among patients about
potentially blinding conditions. Some conditions like HIV and their
effect of the eye were also not widely treated.Whiel we were raising
funds for the outreach models, we received a donation from Helping
Hands ,USA to start a paediatric clinic. Dr KR Murthy insisted that
such a clinic should be run at a government facility as it sees the
maximum number of patients. The Indira Gandhi Institute of Child
Health accepted our offer and we continue to run a paediatric clinic
there covering premature infants to young adults. In 2005 we received
a generous grant from the World Diabetes Foundation after rejections
from over 40 donor agencies to try and see if a mobile platform would
work in the extending services to the hinterland. This culminated in
the path breaking Nayana project, which was further extended by two
grants from the WDF and is still running after the funding period
ended. in 2006 we started the Ramachandra Center of Excellence in
Glaucoma with many unique programs based on the patients overall
quality of life rather than just medical intervention. Also started
was Karnatak's first Ocular Pathology lab and dedicated HIV clinics. A
custom made ocular prosthesis center is also a state first. The past
few years have seen changes in our cataract model too where by partner
NGOs and hospitals refer to the base hospital at VIIO on a continuous
basis rather than on a camp mode. The education efforts of VIIO have
been furthered by a paramedical training school which trains students
in optometry and a tie up with IGNOU for a BSc ( hons) in Optometry. Post Graduate Fellowships in various areas of specialty eye care are
also offered and recently we have received our first international
student with three more scheduled to attend in the next year. Research
at VIIO has resulted in many publications in peer reviewed journals
and research into medical devices, new drugs and treatment modalities. An interesting aspect is that the fourth generation of Dr Murthy's
family now continues the rich legacy along with a bigger team of very
dedicated ophthalmologists. Currently we are extending our outreach by
using the latest technology. a web based patient diagnosing system for
Retinopathy of Prematurity extends the Nayana model to NICUs. A new
project called CODE ( comprehensive diabetes and eye care ) has
reduced the cost of diagnostic tests across Karnataka by over 75% , an
ultra modem diagnostic lab has been added to our services. During 2011
we plan to offer open source hospital management software capable of
working in various indian languages to other NGOs at hugely subsidized
costs
