Eye Hospital in India Restores Sight With Free Surgeries

GLOBAL HEALTH -- January 1, 2010 at 5:25 PM EDT

Eye Hospital in India Restores Sight With Free Surgeries

Friday on the NewsHour, a second look at a Fred de Sam Lazaro report from India on the Aravind system of eye hospitals and clinics, the largest such system in the world. These clinics subsidize sight-restoring surgery for impoverished patients and provide top-of-the-line care for patients who can pay.

Founded in 1976, Aravind has treated some 27 million patients and operated on 3.4 million, mostly to reverse blindness caused by cataracts. The primary surgery now costs just a few dollars more than a meal at McDonald's.

You can watch the full segment tonight, and in the meantime, Fred has filed a reporter's notebook about visiting the hospital 20 years after he first reported on it for the then-MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. There's also a slide show featuring the doctors working at the eye clinics.

And for more, check out this online-exclusive video detailing the partnership that helped grow Aravind eye hospital, featuring an interview with famed epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant.

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