The gift of vision


In 1996, two-year-old Michael was brought to the Sankara Eye Care Hospital in Coimbatore, blind in both eyes. The child was born deep inside a tribal hamlet in the Bargur forest, Tamil Nadu. After delivering him, the mother died and the villagers decided the ‘evil' child had claimed her life. In a gory ritual to remove the “evil spirit”, a concoction was poured into his eyes. He lost vision and ended up in an orphanage.

Seated at the sprawling lush-green five-acre campus of the hospital, the Founder and Managing Trustee, Dr R.V. Ramani, recalls that one of the child's eyes was completely gone and the second had just a two per cent chance of regaining vision. A corneal transplant was done, during which an old man from the Kanchi Mutt, a patient, chanted slokas for the success of the operation. “This is what India is about,” says the doctor.

He adds that on the third day, after the bandage was removed, a doctor entered the child's room to find him waving his fingers before his eyes. “He was two, but was seeing light and movement for the first time in his life. Can you imagine what would have been our feeling at that time? A million dollars cannot give you such satisfaction,” he smiles......Read More

Source: Business Line


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