LVPEI centres to be developed into Institutes of Excellence

The one in Vizag to specialise in geriatric eye care

L.V. Prasad Eye Institute will develop its centres in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar as Institutes of Excellence (IoE).

The Visakhapatnam campus at the Health City set up exactly 11 years ago will be developed as an Institute of Excellence in geriatric eye care.

“As part of our two-pronged strategy we have identified 10 to 12 places for transforming into IoE and create a strong component of primary eye care models to meet the requirement of 150 million people in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha where we are predominantly present,” LVPEI Chairman Gullapalli N. Rao told

The Hindu on Thursday. He said when they thought what next after completing 25 years of LVPEI, which was first set up in Hyderabad in 1987, a decision was taken to lay focus on IoE and primary health care. An IoE will come up exclusively on eye care education for rehabilitation of persons with irreversible blindness.

“We will upgrade centres in Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, Vijayawada as well as in Visakhapatnam as world-class child sight research institutes,” he disclosed.

LVPEI has 16 rural secondary care centres and three more will be added in AP, Telangana and Odisha in next two years. It at present has 16 secondary care and 153 primary care centres. Every year 12 to 14 lakh outpatients are visiting the hospitals located in various States with door-to-door screening of another million. The number of surgeries conducted is estimated 1.2 lakh to 1.3 lakh per year with over 50% done free of cost.

Focus on education

Mr. Rao said they were laying emphasis on education at all the centres by engaging 500 to 600 trainers across the world and publishing 250 to 270 scientific papers. The Hyderabad centre is the biggest in India and rated as top three in the world. “Now we are combining our technological innovations by involving both engineers and doctors in research to develop various low-cost products for better eye care,” he stated.