Eye Care Services in the North of Sri Lanka

A message from our Chairman, Dr Velautham Sarveswaran:

I would like to share a personal charitable initiative in Sri Lanka with you. My wife Ananthi and I opened an eye clinic in Vavuniya on 24th March 2019. This clinic is funded by my wife and I and is named “Ananthi Eye Care” (AEC), which was ceremonially opened by Mrs Parameswary Amma, who is from Ampalavan Pokkanai (neighbouring village of Mullivaikal) and one of the early beneficiaries of AssistRR’s cataract free surgeries. She was taken from Mullaithivu to Mannar in 2013 for the cataract surgery in one eye, as she had already lost vision in the other eye due to cataract. Dr M Sathananthan, Consultant Gynaecologist from the UK, Dr Asela Abeydeera from Association of Community Ophthalmologists of Sri Lanka, Ganeswaran Velautham (Founder of Shivan Foundation and my brother) and many more guests attended the ceremony. See Photos of AEC Opening Ceremony here. Local Consultant Ophthalmologists have been carrying out eye screening at this centre. We provide fee paying as well as free eye care services at this clinic including free spectacles to poor patients. Free screening is currently costing around £5.50 per patient. We have so far screened nearly 200 patients from Mullaithivu, Mannar, and Pathaviya for free. These patients were brought to our Clinic by buses on 3 different weekends and were screened. Around 35 elderly patients from Udaiyarkaddu were recommended to us by Oru Paanai (a UK based charity). Nearly 175 of these patients suffer from cataract and some of them were clinically blind. These patients would require surgeries to regain their eyesight. Fifty patients from Pathaviya were brought to our clinic by Karuna Trust (http://www.karunalanka.org), which is chaired by Mr Mahinda Karunaratne, who, in return, offered to fund 25 cataract surgeries to patients from Mullaithivu.