Sankara Nethralaya News
Sankara Nethralaya Conducts Blood Donation Campaign
Sankara Nethralaya conducted a Blood Donation Campaign on 16th August 2021, to mark India’s 75th Independence Day. The blood donation drive was conducted in association with Voluntary Health Services, Adyar. The drive was organized on the 3rd floor, Mahyco Block.
Our Blood Donation Campaign in association with VHS has been a long-standing tradition of service to the community. Sankara Nethralaya staff have always enthusiastically participated in the campaign and this year too, many donors came forward.
We convey our heartfelt appreciation to each one of the donors for setting aside time in your hectic schedule and donating blood for someone in need.
“Direction Regained” Ratan Sarder, a patient story from Sankara Nethralaya, Kolkata
Mr Ratan Sarder is a 54 year-old private security guard living in the slums of Kalinagar Sarder Para, Kolkata. He is the sole breadwinner, supporting a family of four on a meager monthly income of Rs. 6000/-. Since the past one year, Mr. Ratan had been experiencing poor vision in both eyes making it difficult to continue his job as a security guard.
Though he needed treatment for poor vision, he was unable to access any eye care due to his low income. He struggled to clearly see both near and distant objects, and it became challenge to continue with his job as a security guard, and to even move around.
He came to know from other beneficiaries that Sankara Nethralaya, Mukundapur hospital was conducting a free eye camp. Ratanji was elated that the camp also provided free food, lodging, medicine, and transported him from his home to the hospital and back again after surgery.
At the free eye camp, he was diagnosed as having significant cataract in both eyes and was advised for cataract surgery. The SN team brought Ratanji to the hospital one day before the surgery where he underwent a detailed eye examination, along with blood tests and a pre-operative checkup.
After his cataract surgery, and the first post-operative checkup he was returned to his home. One month after the surgery, he was given free glasses. Ratan is very happy that he has regained his vision with the support of the doctors and all the staff of Sankara Nethralaya, Kolkata, and is grateful for the free treatment that has enabled him to keep supporting his family.
In his own words – “Amar chokh chara ami puro dishehara hoye gechilam. Ami amar disha khuje pelam” (I was completely directionless without my vision. I have regained the direction of my life).
With your support, many more patients affected during the pandemic will regain their vision!
All donations to SN OM Trust are 100% IRS Tax Exempted in US, IRS Registered 501 (c) (3)
We seek your continued support as we progress in our battle against blindness.
UV Safety Awareness Highlights
UV safety awareness happens every year in the month of July, promoted by organizations including the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs emphasizing the health impact of UV on body and eye. The campaign also works on educating people about effective and appropriate UV protection.
The Occupational Optometry Services of Sankara Nethralaya aimed to cater awareness to their employees and patients through interactive sessions, where they can participate and gain knowledge. To encourage their participation both employees and the public were rewarded, sponsored by Essilor, India #SeemoreDomore.
Employees from various departments / centers participated in the event. The fun filled learning contests was conducted for 3 weeks displaying the themes: Basics of UV, causes & effects and finally the protection from UV. Amidst the busy work life a total of 60 responses were received and creative posters were prepared by employees explaining the aspects of UV and protection against the effects. For awareness to patients, danglers with UV safety information were hanged on all the OPD areas.
The winners chosen by lucky draw were awarded with Photochromatics and Sun glasses sponsored by Essilor. All the participants were given a cap as symbol of UV protection.
Seeking Sri Maha Periyava’s Blessings with a Ganapathi Homam Performed at Sankara Nethralaya’s new centre at R. A. Puram
Seeking His Holiness Jagadguru Maha Periyava’s’ blessings, a Ganapathi Homam was conducted at Sankara Nethralaya’s newest centre in R. A. Puram early on 12th July, 2021 between 4:30 am to 6:00am.
Mr Rajesh Bassi and Dr.Shikha Bassi, In Charge, Sankara Nethralaya R.A.Puram branch, and Deputy Director Neuro-Ophthalmology department took Sankalpam and performed the puja on behalf of Sankara Nethralaya family.
The puja was attended by Dr. Girish S. Rao, the President of Medical Research Foundation, Sankara Nethralaya, Dr. T. S. Surendran, Vice Chairman and Director of Paediatric Ophthalmology, Dr. Sripriya Krishnamurthy, Director, Department of General Ophthalmology, Dr. Suganeswari Ganesan, Senior Consultant, Vitreoretina and Oncology services, Dr. V. V. Jaichandran, Anaesthetist, Dr. Sharanya Sarah Abraham, Associate Consultant, Department of Uvea, and Dr. Srivalli Kaza, Senior Consultant, Department of General Ophthalmology.
Mr. and Mrs. V. Sriram, who came forward to offer their house for SN’s mission, were also present. We are grateful to the kind-hearted, service-oriented couple who are helping us to continue serving the community.
Spread out over 6,000 sqft, the new branch has a ‘state of art’ operation theatre (OT) equipped for advanced technology cataract surgery, and an Outpatient setup equipped with a Humphrey Visual Field Analyser, YAG laser, orthoptics ,Contact lens department, optical outlet, Pharmacy and Laboratory service. Comprehensive eye care, with other speciality services like Glaucoma, Uvea, Squint and Paediatric ophthalmology, Oculoplasty, Neuro-ophthalmology and Medical Retina are offered at R.A Puram SN.The branch is an ambulatory care facility offering the same quality of service as our apex facility in a cosy setting to our patients closer to their homes.
Due to the prevailing pandemic situation, the Homam had only a small physical gathering while many joined on the Zoom platform.
Sankara Nethralaya Expands its Oncology Services by Collaborating with Apollo Hospitals Chennai
Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai is happy to announce its expansion of services in the field of eye cancers. Delivering quality care at affordable rates has ever been the policy of Sankara Nethralaya (SN) since its inception. Following the footsteps of its founder Dr. S. S. Badrinath and to strive for excellence in the field of ocular oncology, Sankara Nethralaya joined hands with Apollo Proton Cancer Centre (APCC), Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd. This collaboration with Apollo Proton Cancer Centre will open the doors for a wide range of facilities to be made accessible to patients suffering from primary eye cancers or cancers involving other tissues with metastatic spread to the eye. Ocular oncology team of Sankara Nethralaya and oncology team of Apollo hospitals will work together to offer a holistic approach for ocular conditions requiring a multidisciplinary approach and vice versa.
This historic moment began with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding by Dr. Girish S. Rao, President of Medical Research Foundation on 1stJuly, 2021 with Mrs Preetha Reddy, the Executive Vice Chairperson of the Apollo Hospitals Group in the presence of Dr. T. S. Surendran, Vice Chairman, Director of Paediatric Ophthalmology, Dr. Ronnie George, President, Director of Research, Director of Glaucoma Services, Dr. Ambika S., Director of Neuro – Ophthalmology, Dr. Suganeswari Ganesan, Senior Consultant, Vitreoretina and oncology services, Mr Harshad Reddy, Director Apollo home care and Mr. Suresh Kumar P, General Manager (SN).
The Ocular Oncology Service of Sankara Nethralaya caters to both common and rare cancers. With availability of cutting-edge imaging and treatment modalities, exploring newest treatment or techniques in advanced eye cancers will soon be a reality.
Special highlight of this MOU would be facilitation of multidisciplinary tumor board meetings. Services offered to patients of Sankara Nethralaya would be at nominal rates and would cover PET CT, neurosurgical procedures, intra-arterial chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Apart from external beam radiation therapy, other novel radiation therapy called proton therapy is a specialised treatment, which tends to deliver focused radiation to the tumor itself with less radiation to surrounding healthy tissue. This is a useful modality in the management of pediatric solid tumors with the least side effects.
Ocular oncologists from Sankara Nethralaya will also work with radiologists, radiation oncologists and neurosurgeons in a constant effort to save more human lives, preserve vision and globe salvage.
Sri Nathella Sampathu Chetty Clinical Laboratory Installation of DXH 560- Small And Mighty From Beckman Coulter
DxH 560
The compact 5 part differential autoloader Hematology Analyzer with effective clinical sensitivity, low sample volume (17µL), increased throughput has been successfully installed in Department of clinical Hematology and Clinical pathology.
DxH 800
This machine will be serving as a standby equipment for the existing higher version DxH 800 (with automated slide makes and stainer)
Dr.S.Vasanthi Badrinath (Lab Advisor, SNSC Clinical lab) did the honor of inaugurating the equipment on 8/7/21. This is the first equipment of its kind to be installed in Tamil Nadu at Sri Nathella Sampathu Chetty Clinical laboratory Medical Research Foundation.
Sankara Nethralaya Congratulates Our Doctors
Several of our ophthalmologists received awards and also presented significant lectures in their areas of specialisation at the recently concluded 79th Annual Conference of All India Ophthalmological Society (AIOS). This was the first virtual conference (from 24th June, 2021 to 27th June, 2021) due to the ongoing pandemic.
Dr. T. S. Surendran, Vice Chairman and Director – Dept. of Paediatric Ophthalmology, Delivered the 2nd Dr L P Agarwal Endowment Lecture on 26th June, 2021. Dr. TSS delivered a brief overview on Sankara Nethralaya and its philosophies, our community outreach programs, specializations, and technological achievements, including the Mobile Eye Surgical Unit (MESU), Hospital Management System, Clinical Decision Support System, and Ophthalmic EMR.
Dr. Jyotirmay Biswas, Director – Dept. of Ophthalmology – Uvea, won the AIOC posterior podium award in Uvea section on 24th June, 2021 and the Rajendra Prasad Oration award (Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Science).
Dr Rajiv Raman, Senior Consultant, Shri Bhagwan Mahavir Vitreoretinal services, received the P Siva Reddy International Award at the Virtual AIOS meeting in June 2021 for his significant research work in the field of Diabetic Retinopathy.
Dr. Sudharshan S, Senior Consultant, Dept. of Uvea & Intraocular Inflammation won the AIOS-IJO Gold Award for the Year 2020 for the paper “Human immunodeficiency virus and intraocular inflammation in the era of highly active anti-retroviral therapy – An update”
Dr. Vineet Ratra won the International Ophthalmic Heroes of India, May 2020 for his video on Iatrogenic Descemetorhexis during Cataract Surgery; The Intraoperative Telltale Signs and Postoperative Management in ASCRS.
The following doctors won the IJO Honor Award for Peer Review for their outstanding quality of reviewing:
Dr. Dhanashree Ratra, Senior Consultant, Dept. of Ophthalmology – Vitreo Retinal;
Dr. Muna P Bhende, Deputy Director, Dept. of Ophthalmology – Vitreo Retinal; and
Dr. Mohammad Shahid Alam, Consultant, Dept. of Orbit Oculoplasty – Reconstructive and Aesthetic Services, Aditya Birla Sankara Nethralaya.
SN and Social Responsibility…. Beyond Duty during Pandemic Second Wave
A 10 – member team from Sankara Nethralaya braved the Second Wave and volunteered alongside the doctors and staff of Stanley Government Medical College and Hospital for two weeks.
The New block in Stanley Medical College Hospital (SMCH) in Chennai, along with four other blocks, serving with 1,700 COVID beds, were intimidating yet filled with rays of hope for the locality and beyond.
The second pandemic wave has thrown us many challenges, with our healthcare system struggling to cope. Shortage of oxygen and medications, urgency in vaccine coverage, infodemic that dents the efforts of public health, and undermines the humongous efforts of health care workers are among the challenges. One such challenge is healthcare manpower, which can never be enough in a population such as ours.
Sankara Nethralaya, while going through these challenges with responsibility during the lockdown, responded with eleven of its volunteers, helping the staff of SMCH in various stages of patient care at zero delay rooms, triage wards and IMCU care. The doctors, nurses and social workers in the SN team put forth their skills and knowledge in triaging, helping to treat and manage care for the suffering patients in a small yet significant way, thus, reducing the burden of the hospital staff.
Donning their PPEs everyday from 8 am till 2 pm, the never ending wave of patients were helped at this COVID war zone by our volunteers from 13th May 2021 for two weeks. Effective protocols in place, the hospital staff managed these patients in four shifts. Our brave warriors wished it was possible for them to help in all of the hours but they had to keep human endurance as a reality check.
The volunteering efforts were spearheaded by Dr Suganeswari Ganesan, Senior Consultant, Retina & Oncology Services; Dr Baskaran Mani, Senior Consultant and Deputy Director Glaucoma Services; Dr. Gajendra Kumar Verma, Consultant Community Ophthalmology; Dr Sivaranjani P and Dr Radhika Sriram, Post graduates; Nurse Leela Bai R and Nurse Uma K, Hospital Infection Committee Executives; Kanagaraj and Vinoth kumar B, Ophthalmic Nursing assistants; Arun Kumar, Diabetic Retinopathy Project Manager; and Saravanan M., Multimedia Services.
It is heartening to note that in-kind and cash donations have come in from SN Alumni and other well wishers, seeing the efforts of our volunteers. This is used to get essentials such as portable O2 delivery systems, adult diapers and N95 masks to better equip our staff in the fight against this pandemic.
We wish this scourge recedes to bring us back to normalcy as quickly as possible. However, it is but reality that it will stay for a while and thus there is a need for help in kind as well as in manpower to volunteer in such ‘war’ zones. Let humanity prevail in helping our fellow citizens.
TSNA Netra Vidya Series
The Netra Vidya learning platform was launched and initiated by The Sankara Nethralaya Academy in 2014 to impart knowledge and skills to budding optometrists, optometry students, and experienced practitioners to up-skill and reskill themselves and keep themselves updated about the best evidence-based practices in clinical practice. During the pandemic situation in 2020, it was restructured as a virtual lecture series to deliver Optometry programs. The Sankara Nethralaya Academy and the BV/VT team of SN ushered in the Netra Vidya series on 16th September with a four-part series of online lectures and tutorials aimed at educating and upgrading young and upcoming optometrists on the nuances and best practices to successfully run an Orthoptics practice.
The chosen topics intended to cover basic binocular vision, vergence and accommodation assessments, interpretation, a correlation between the clinical parameters and diagnosis in NSBVA (non-strabismic binocular vision anomalies) along with management and vision therapy practices. On 16th September 2020, Dr. Rizwana initiated the BV series with a motivational talk to youngsters on the topic “To the Optometry class of 2020”. The talk was well-received and set the tone for the subsequent academic sessions that commenced on 19th September 2020 and concluded on 17th October 2020.
On 19th September, the first part of the four-part series began with a two-hour session by the Binocular team of SN headed by Dr. Rizwana, in which they took the participants through an interactive case discussion in which the participants were asked to analyse and solve various problem-oriented cases that are common in strabismic practice. The trouble-shooting skills were enhanced for the 100 plus participants who found the systematic approaches to problem solving very helpful.
On 25th September Prof. Mitchell Scheimann, celebrated author and currently ‘Dean of Research, Director of Graduate studies and renowned faculty at Salus University, USA, conducted the second session in which he deconstructed the Clinical testing of Strabismus into a simple two-step frame work. He also dealt with understanding the prognosis for strabismus treatment based on clinical assessment in great detail. The session had close to 170 participants from various parts of India and abroad. Seeing the enthusiastic response from the participants, the BV core team Dr. Rizwana, Mr. Praveen Kumar, Ms. Ayisha Atiya, and Mr. Amit Bhowmick took the participants through a special session on basics of Vision Therapy on 10th of October 2020. This session was open only to those participants who had registered for all the three core sessions.
The much awaited concluding session by Dr. Susan Cotter was conducted on the topic “Prescribing prisms in primary eye care practice- Tips and Tricks”. Dr. Cotter, a Professor of Optometry at Marshall B Ketchum University and author of many peer-reviewed publications on Paediatric Optometry and strabismus, simplified the art of prescribing prisms and encouraged the young optometrists to prescribe prisms for strabismic patients. More than 170 participants attended the concluding session by Dr. Cotter.
Some Testimonials from the participants
“Excellent lectures”
“Lectures were very easy to comprehend”
“Got all doubts clarified”
“Videos and pragmatic lectures made the sessions more interesting”
“I really appreciate the session, the way it was conducted as it was interactive and gave opportunity for case discussion as groups using Zoom breakout rooms”
“It is an excellent platform, great group, please keep continuing in making us learn happy”
“The lecture series was really a great opportunity for learning, thank you – the entire team and their hard work behind it”.
Dr. Rizwana Becomes President of The Optometric Association of Tamil Nanbargal (OATN)
The Optometric Association of Tamil Nanbargal (OATN) has unanimously nominated and chosen Dr. Jameel Rizwana Hussaindeen (Head, Binocular Vision clinic, Sankara Nethralaya) as the upcoming President for the next tenure.
The OATN, established in 2011, aims to strive for the recognition and regulation of the Optometry profession & education. It has been established as the legal association for Tamil Nadu Optometry since 2012. The association has 500+ members and counting, including life members and student members, from across Tamil Nadu. OATN has served as a great source of support to the Optometry community through dissemination of knowledge, and hands-on training through conferences, seminars, and workshops. The association also volunteers to support NGOs to provide eye and vision care to the needy, deserving, and for individuals with vision impairment. The association conducts strong lobbying to facilitate the passing of the AHP bill that would immensely benefit the Optometry community.
OATN also provides support to young graduates and job seekers through its massive networking channels. The legacy of this association was greatly supported by its Founding President Mr. Singaravelu, who was then followed by Mrs. Poongothai and now Dr. Jameel Rizwana Hussaindeen, Sankara Nethralaya will step into this illustrious position.
The Sankara Nethralaya family congratulates Dr. Rizwana wishing her and the association to reach greater heights under her leadership.