Central India ROP Programme
Retinopathy of Prematurity — because a baby born too soon deserves to see
When a baby is born prematurely, their retinas are not yet fully developed. In the NICUs of Central India, lives are being saved that would have been lost a generation ago. But without expert eye screening, many of those saved babies will grow up blind. We screen them before that happens.
A crisis hiding inside medical progress
Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) is an eye condition that affects premature babies — particularly those born before 31 weeks or weighing less than 1,500 grams. As neonatal intensive care has improved across India, more premature babies are surviving. But survival without expert eye screening means that a significant number of those children will develop abnormal blood vessel growth in the retina — and if not caught in time, total, irreversible blindness.
In the government hospitals of Central India, premature babies are routinely saved. But few hospitals have the specialist paediatric ophthalmologists needed to screen them for ROP. We began our programme on 12 December 2012 — a date we chose deliberately, 12.12.12, to mark the beginning of something we hoped would never stop.
What we do
- Regular screening visits to government hospitals in Nagpur, Gondia and Bhandara
- Our doctors travel as many as 320 kilometres in a single day to screen babies
- Approximately 1,500 babies screened per year
- Laser treatment for ROP performed at Suraj Eye Institute — free of charge
- Follow-up care until the retina has fully matured
- Education of neonatal teams on recognising when screening is urgent
The urgency of the window
ROP has a treatment window. Miss it by even a few weeks and no surgery on earth will restore that child’s sight. The entire purpose of our programme is to find every at-risk baby before that window closes. Every visit matters. Every screened baby matters. A baby laser-treated in time grows up to read, to study, to live a full-sighted life. Without us, they would not.
12.12.12
Programme launch date — over a decade of unbroken screening
1,500
Premature babies screened every year across 3 districts
320 km
Maximum distance our doctors drive in a single day to screen babies
This programme needs your support
Reaching 2,000 screenings a year — our next goal — requires more fuel, more travel, more equipment. A single screening visit to a district hospital costs approximately ₹8,000. Laser treatment for one baby with ROP costs ₹12,000. That is the cost of a lifetime of sight for a child who was born fighting to survive.