Narayana Nethralaya, a Super Specialty Eye Care Hospital, has set up a rehabilitation centre for children suffering from various ‘untreatable’ eye diseases, such as, retinal dystrophies and developmental anomalies.

There are about 3 lakh children suffering from eye diseases that need this integrated rehabilitation in India. Most of them are visually impaired because of cortical vision impairment, retinal dystrophies and various developmental anomalies. These children need visual rehabilitation, which is the process of improving functional ability despite visual loss. The centre in realising the project is making efforts to involve like-minded stakeholders.

Dr K Bhujang Shetty, Chairman and Managing Director, Narayana Nethralaya speaking about the initiative said “We perform hundreds of surgeries at our hospital every day to give sight to children and adults suffering from treatable eye diseases. However, there are thousands of children suffering from the so-called ‘untreatable’ eye diseases and they need special care,” he added.

He further said “We have been successful in not only improving the visual function in a majority of such cases but also improve their quality of life through our integrated rehabilitation approach. We are hopeful to expand this facility to a stand-alone rehabilitation centre which will exclusively cater to the needs of such children.”

“Under our ‘Buds to Blossoms’ initiative we have been providing vision rehabilitation, physiotherapy, speech and occupational therapy, mobility and cognitive therapy along with psychological and neurology support all under one roof. Owing to the increased demand, we hope to expand this service to an exclusive rehabilitation centre,” explained Dr Anand S Vinekar, Program Director and Paediatric Retinal Surgeon, Narayana Nethralaya.

Fundraising

Narayana Nethralaya is in the process of raising funds to develop a rehabilitation centre for such children. It has launched an initiative ‘Soul Senses’ to raise funds through musical charity events. The inaugural edition was held on December 27 and the ‘artists’ are all ophthalmologists from the institute.

The hospital has already committed annually Rs 5 crore for the healthcare of the underprivileged. The aim is complete the rehabilitation centre by 2021; the total project cost is estimated recurrent cost of Rs 1 crore annually. The rehabilitation centre will be spread across 5,000 square feet and will be set up close to the parent institution

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