Sight Save
Central India’s battle against diabetes-related blindness
India has 65 million people with diabetes — the second highest number on the planet. Many will never know they are losing their sight until it is too late. We decided to find them before that happened.
The silent epidemic inside the epidemic
Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of preventable blindness in working-age adults. It creeps up silently — no pain, no warning — until one morning the vision blurs and it is too late for treatment to fully restore it. Across Central India, millions of people with diabetes have never had their eyes examined. Most of them live hours from a specialist. Many cannot afford one.
Sight Save — originally called Sight Serve — was our systematic answer. We equipped a vehicle with a fundus camera, slit lamp and indirect ophthalmoscope — the same tools used in our city hospital — and drove it to every government district hospital we could reach.
What we have done
- Over 1,500 visits to government district hospitals across Central India
- Hospitals as far as 160 km from Nagpur — often requiring 6-hour drives on rural roads
- More than 40,000 patients with diabetes screened and examined by our subspecialists
- Subspecialties covered: retina, glaucoma, cornea, paediatric ophthalmology and trauma
- Patients requiring treatment brought back to Nagpur — free of charge
- Follow-up and long-term management for chronic conditions
The numbers
1,500+
Hospital outreach visits across the region
40,000+
Diabetic patients examined — many seeing a specialist for the first time
160 km
Maximum distance driven to reach patients — in all weathers
A middle-aged farmer from Bhandara district arrived at one of our camps having known he had diabetes for three years but never having had his eyes checked. Our examination found severe proliferative diabetic retinopathy — at a stage where, if left untreated for six more months, he would have been blind. He came to Nagpur. We treated him. He went home with his sight — and his livelihood — intact.
Help stop diabetic blindness
Laser treatment to halt diabetic retinopathy costs around ₹5,000. An intravitreous injection that saves the central vision of a working adult costs ₹8,000. Compared to the lifetime cost of blindness — lost income, lost independence, family burden — these are extraordinary bargains. Your donation makes them available to people who would otherwise never receive them.