Nagpur Million Project
Nearly half of Nagpur’s people live in cramped, under-served slums. Eye disease is rampant. Affordable care is nowhere. We decided to bring the clinic to them.
1.2 million people. No eye care. We changed that.
Approximately 45% of Nagpur’s population — around 1.2 million people — lives in slums. In these densely packed communities, preventable blindness, untreated refractive error, and eye infections are facts of daily life. For most families, the city’s specialist hospitals might as well be on another planet: too far, too expensive, too intimidating.
The Nagpur Million Project was born from a simple question: what if we stopped waiting for them to come to us, and went to them instead?
We began with 7 eye clinics a month. By 2017, driven by the overwhelming response from patients who had never before seen a doctor, we had grown to 24 clinics a month — one for nearly every day of the working year, carried out in community halls, schools, and the open air of Nagpur’s slums.
What happens at a camp
- Vision screening for every person who attends — adults and children alike
- Free spectacles dispensed on the spot for refractive errors
- Eye disease detection — cataract, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and more
- Referral and transport to Suraj Eye Institute for those who need surgery
- Free surgery — patients from these camps never pay. Not one rupee.
What we see in the slums
The response from the community humbled us. Queues forming before dawn. Mothers bringing children who had been squinting in school for years without anyone noticing. Elderly men and women who had simply accepted their failing vision as old age and God’s will. When we gave them glasses — or told them we could restore their sight with a twenty-minute operation — the disbelief on their faces was something none of us in the team will ever forget.
The Nagpur Million Project is not charity in the patronising sense. It is a correction of an injustice: the injustice that says the quality of your eyesight should depend on your income.
The numbers
24
Eye camps a month in Nagpur’s slums
1.2M
People in Nagpur’s slums who are our target community
₹0
Charged to every patient from slum communities
Help us keep going
Running 24 camps a month takes fuel, staff, equipment and medications. A single outreach camp costs roughly ₹15,000. A cataract surgery for one of the patients referred from these camps costs ₹3,500. Your donation — however large or small — keeps the clinics running and the lights on for Nagpur’s million.
Donations to Om Drishti Trust, Nagpur. 50% tax exemption. Debit/credit card, internet banking, UPI and wallet accepted.