VALUE ADDITION -- 2 :

TAJ GATEWAY PARTNERING WITH THE EYE FOUNDATION FOR EYE CARE

BY P S SUNDAR

When Taj Gateway Hotel, Coonoor, joined hands with The Eye Foundation Ooty in the conduct of eye-care camps, it was more than a welfare measure for its employees because the beneficiaries included the community around.

“We conducted this camp as part of our ‘Tata Voluntary Week’ (TVW) celebrations aimed at creating a healthier community around us.  So, while our employees and their families got examined, our staff showed voluntary involvement in personally reaching out to the needy, especially the poor deserted senior citizens”, Gateway General Manager R Muralidharan told me.

“We offered professional eye health check-up to the beneficiaries through the team from The Eye Foundation in two sessions – one in our hotel campus where the community around us, especially those in Church Hill residential area, got screened for eye health.  In the second session, our employees took the team from The Eye Foundation to Anbalayam Old Age Home in Denalai village where all the inmates – the deserted senior citizens – received professional screening and the necessary consultations”, Muralidharan disclosed.

That is what makes TVW different from staff welfare schemes – here, while the staff stand to benefit, they act as volunteers in taking the welfare measures out to the community.   

“Besides screening vision, we gave professional consultations and have offered support for further treatment including surgeries to the needy.  Our Chief Dr Girish Reddy and Dr Mugdha Kumar will perform surgeries at our Ooty branch hospital”, Dr Jetanshu Kaush of The Eye Foundation, who led the team at the camps, said.

“All the welfare measures we had extended through TVW all these years had been well received by the community.  The endeavour had given all our associates a tremendous mental satisfaction of being use to the needy in the sphere it is sought.  Now, for the current eye-care scheme, we have sponsored spectacles and medicines to the needy and will support follow-up treatment”, Gateway Human Resource Manager D Antony Gerald noted.

“Since its inception in Ooty in 2011, The Eye Foundation has conducted several camps resulting in about two lakh people from about 450 places in the Nilgiris getting free services”, said India’s renowned ophthalmologist Dr D Ramamurthy, who had established The Eye Foundation in 1984 at Coimbatore.

“Besides camps in villages, we visit Wellington Cantonment Hospital on Wednesdays (which covers one lakh population) and RKC Clinic at Kotagiri on Thursday (which covers 80,000 population). We hold special camps every year at Govt Cordite Factory, Aruvankadu.  We have also conducted seven camps so far in tea estates in Kotagiri where poor have benefited from our surgeries as well”, he said.  

Interestingly, The Eye Foundation has conducted several camps in hotels where besides the employees and nearby community, hotel guests have also benefited.

Over a million patients have got treated for various eye diseases in the portals of The Eye Foundation in Coimbatore and branches of Ooty, Tirupur, Mettupalayam, Bangalore and Kochi.

“Among the reasons for choosing our services are affordability, all types of surgeries being done, no hospital admission for regular surgeries, no stitching, no pain no bed rest for cataract surgeries, and spectacles – lens and frame included – from Rs 750 being supplied”, Dr Ramamurthy explained.       

He disclosed, “To enable comprehensive eye evaluation, we have facilities including

a) LASIK/bladeless LASIK (Intralase) treatment for myopia (near vision), hyperopia

(Distance vision) and astigmatism (blurred vision) .

b) Phakic intraocular lens for high myopia.

c) Suture less cataracts surgery with latest sovereign phaco emulsification system.

d) State of the art glaucoma and vitreo-retina services.

e) Squint and low vision aids clinic.

f) Corneal transplantation.

g) Contact lens clinic.

h) Computer vision clinic.

i) Headache clinic”.

“In the last six years of functioning in Ooty, we have conducted 2,449 surgeries including 2,155 cataract”, he said.

“The doctors of The Eye Foundation Ooty regularly create awareness on eye donation. We have all facilities available to harvest eyes on call. Our expert team visits the place immediately on receiving call and arrange for the transplantation to the needy one”, Dr Ramamurthy added. 

Dr D RAMAMURTHY

(response can also be sent to: pssundar.coonoor@gmail.com)