Vision Centre opens at AVHC

The Aravind Primary Eye Care Centre was inaugurated and officially opened on February 21 at the Auroville Health Centre. The new vision centre provides comprehensive eye examinations, screenings for hypertension and diabetes, First Aid for foreign body removal, and tele-consultations with the ophthalmologist at the Aravind Eye Hospital in Pondicherry. Patients requiring treatment for cataract and specialty eye problems are referred to the main hospital. Affordable eyeglasses are also available for purchase, and the centre will be providing eye screenings in schools with the help of teachers.

The Aravind Eye Care System (AECS) was founded in 1976 by Dr. G. Venkataswamy, a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, as an alternative health care model to eliminate preventable blindness. Starting with just 11 beds in a rented house in Madurai, it has grown to ten major eye hospitals in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry with over 4,000 beds, and a total of 45 Vision Centres in rural and semi-urban areas, including this newest one in Auroville. At the AECS, 65 percent of its eye surgeries were performed free of cost or at highly subsidized rates. It performs 45 percent of the cataract surgeries done in Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu.

This is the sixth outreach vision centre of the Aravind Eye Hospital, Pondicherry.