In this rapidly growing social world, we all race up in our lives and tend to aim for hitting the bucket to be millionaires. In this journey, most of us let other things go by and ignore even the biggest of biggest challenges the society around us is facing. In such a world, we hardly come across people who go out of their way, step back and help the poor and the needy. Here’s the story of one such amazing person, Dr. Shiva Prasad Sahoo, who has been serving the poor with sight restoring eye surgeries.
Trilochan Netralaya is a non-profit, charitable eye hospital which Dr. Shiva Prasad established in Sambalpur, a remote district of Odisha in 2008.
Born in a poverty-stricken family, Dr.Shiva had a very rough sail to get into the medical profession. He joined the government funded school of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, where he realised the importance of good education and human values and then, decided to serve the needy, after enjoying the free-education for his entire schooling period. After his post-graduation, he denied the offer of a very high-paying job, bid a goodbye to the luxurious lifestyle he would enjoy thereafter and anchored himself to service the ones in need.
Since the hospital’s inception, it has transformed more than 100 thousand people’s lives by providing them high end surgeries at a very nominal cost. These include people from around 12 tribal and very poor districts of Sambalpur, Deogarh, Kalahandi, Raigada and many more.
The fact that blindness is the next greatest tragedy after death provoked Dr. Shiva. He then decided to provide the best quality treatment to the people of the state which was only known for illiteracy and poverty until then.
After 10 years of hard work, he now has almost 3 full-time ophthalmologists and a team of 60 paramedical staff, which is largely dominated by college dropout girls, to help him achieve his mission. This not only caters to his target but also empowers women, affecting the lives of another 100 families.
The three eye care units under the public charitable trust, Vision India Foundation of Sambalpur, Bhawanipatna and Jagatsinghpur successfully lend a hand to more than 10 million population, with around 10,000+ eye surgeries every year.
Photo- The Youth library
The hospital has started offering a large variety of top end services including the most expensive cataract surgery using phacoemulsification technique at a very affordable cost. These treatments usually range beyond thousands of rupees in a private hospital.
Trilochan Netralaya has been trying to update their technologies and the knowledge of their doctors by constantly conducting seminars and workshops by international guests from Malaysia, US, UK and many more countries. They have aimed to spread health awareness by taking up the decade old awareness program of Singapore in the name of i2Eye.
Amongst all these, Dr.Shiva still faces the trouble to get a patronage and support from the government authorities in spite of the fact that there currently run many schemes which aim for the same. There are many government run hospitals running in small rented buildings of these districts with hardly any proper amenities.
We strongly desire such amazing people get recognised by the Indian government, where their passion and hard work are respected and are appreciated all over. We believe that Dr. Shiva’s mission of providing the best eye-care facility to the most remote areas of our country will come true at the earliest.