The John A. Moran Eye Center is supporting global efforts to eliminate curable blindness on an unprecedented scale thanks to a new partnership with the world's largest eye care provider.
An agreement reached in late 2017 made Moran's Global Outreach Division a North American academic partner of India-based Aravind Eye Care System, an innovator of low-cost, high-volume surgery. Moran is lending its educational expertise to Aravind, growing the number of eye surgeons in developing nations.
"By combining resources with Aravind we are dramatically improving the efficiency of training ophthalmologists practicing in the developing world," said Jeff Pettey, MD, Moran's Global Outreach Division co-medical director. "The impact is magnified as our continued support allows these ophthalmologists to create centers of training excellence in their own countries."
Moran's international ophthalmologist partners can now visit Aravind hospitals for training and fellowships. Beyond education, Moran is collaborating with Aravind on large-scale clinical research and intraocular lens technologies and design.
"Our researchers now have access to Aravind's extraordinary patient volume and innovations," said Global Outreach Division Senior Medical Director Alan S. Crandall, MD, who traveled to Aravind headquarters in Chennai to demonstrate surgical techniques in December 2017. "Together, we are perfectly aligned to boost training opportunities and to move new treatments and techniques forward more quickly."
An exchange of ideas also stands to improve care. In Chennai, Crandall tested Aravind's new, more affordable version of a phacoemulsification machine used during cataract surgery in developed nations.
Manas Nath, MD, from Aravind's Pondicherry Hospital, (pictured at right with Pettey) visited Moran in November 2017 to observe surgeries and clinical practices.
About Aravind
Aravind was founded in 1976 and is renowned for developing a cost recovery model that encourages patients who can afford to pay for surgery abroad to stay in India for their care. Those funds then pay for surgery for someone without financial means. Among 18 hospitals and community eye clinics and 2,500 free vision-screening clinics, Aravind surgeons performed more than 500,000 surgeries in the year ending March 2017.
Pictured at left: Moran and Aravind physicians signed a memorandum of understanding to formalize their partnership in December 2017. From left to right, Haripriya Aravind, MS, MBA, head of Cataract and IOL 亚洲自慰视频, Aravind; RD Thulasiraj, MBA, director, operations, Aravind, executive director, LAICO; RD Ravindran, MBBS, chairman, Aravind; Alan S. Crandall, MD, Moran; Kalpana Narendran, DO, DNB, chief, Pediatric Ophthalmology and Intraocular Lens and Cataract 亚洲自慰视频, Aravind; Eric Hansen, MD, Moran; Lyndsay Dinino, education coordinator, Moran Global Outreach Division.