Getting the blind to see gives greatest satisfaction: Doctor

Chennai: The eye doctor does about a dozen surgeries a day and hundreds of surgeries every month. Vision is the most precious gift of mankind and the patients know this well as they stream to eye hospitals for treatment. And yet what fascinates the renowned eye surgeon, Dr Mohan Rajan. more is in seeing reward for efforts put in to get more and more people to donate their eyes so others who have not seen properly or not at all in their lifetime might get to know firsthand this great gift of eyesight.

The eye donation week and month have run their course in September and the doctor is pleased that a busy month will soon be producing better results.

“We used to get a pair of eyes once a week, now it is one pair a day. That is how much the awareness has grown,” he says after another hectic schedule of surgeries, inspirational talks to students, conducting rallies to raise public awareness and handling visits of celebrities who help the cause of donation by lending their charisma.

Students and young people gather in droves to listen to the importance of gifting eyes and organs upon their death so others may live better while a part of themselves may live on through the gift of eyesight they leave behind. Having been on the rounds since his youth with his father Dr N. Rajan, a pioneering eye doctor of the city, Dr Mohan Rajan had imbibed the art of eye treatment so much he could not have but become an eye surgeon himself. “What I do for patients is less than one per cent of what our eye bank and charitable trusts achieve in spreading eye care and restoring vision with corneal transplants,” he says modestly.

An association with the Rotary Club had led to the formation of the Rotary Rajan Eye Bank, devoted to the treatment of corneal blindness. The Chennai Vision Charitable Trust, with considerable help from the Vijay Amritraj Foundation and Cognizant Foundation , has spread its wings so much that Dr Mohan is in a position to boast that in the 150 sq km area they are able to cover in and around the city in Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts, there is not a single 'mature cataract'.  

The Nethra Vahana - a state-of-the-art mobile eye clinic equipped with lasers and fundus camera - which takes specialty eye care to the rural doorstep is a wonder as it brings the best of diagnostics and treatment to villagers. Dr Mohan recalled the early days when his father Dr.N.Rajan would go and run these rural camps in schools in makeshift operation theatres but desisted once the government wanted them to stop taking the risks of infections. “Those needing surgeries are now moved to the city for expert care, but we do everything we can in the van itself for the rural people so that a problem like cataract is spotted early and surgical help rendered to the patients in the city,” he explains.

The doctor’s grouse is that in a city in which there are about 100 deaths a day, if eye banks get even 30 pairs of eyes a day, much of the corneal blindness problem of Tamil Nadu could be solved to a considerable extent.

A mobile hotline tended to 24x7, trained staff with mobility to reach and harvest corneas within 30 minutes, and an algorithm to match harvested corneas against a waiting patient's requirements are part of an efficient system the Rajan Eye Bank has put together to make donations possible and effective so harvested corneas are not lost.

Sustained efforts have seen eye donations touching about 6,500 free corneal transplants so far, a figure the eye bank is hoping to double in half a decade. The greatest number of vision impaired and blind people live in India, their estimated number being anywhere close to 20  million blind people of about 80 million globally. The acute shortage of optometrists and donated eyes means the gap is always growing. This is where DrMohan Rajan derives his greatest satisfaction from and that is to do with closing that gap between the vision impaired and donated corneas.

The 360 degree coverage in eye care which Dr Mohan Rajan and Rajan Eye Care are able to deliver makes it very unique.