Eye Care in India: KSA's Volunteer Mission

A Country That Doesn't Leave You Indifferent

India is a place of extremes. Some fall in love with it immediately. Others never leave their five-star hotel. Home to 1.1 billion people speaking over 100 languages, dominated by New Delhi's sprawl and crowned by the Taj Mahal—India has the facts everyone knows. But here's one you might not: India operates one of the world's most efficient eye care systems.

Why We Went to India

Our team travelled to India on a voluntary mission. Not as tourists, but as eye care professionals. We came to gain experience, learn, and lend our hands to eye screening programs—whether in remote villages or established hospitals.

Over the years, we've supported eye health initiatives across the globe. There's an old saying: do good, and it comes back to you. In February 2016, our optometrists got the chance to visit Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) and Forus Health, an innovative medical device company founded in 2010. In just six years, they'd grown to over 100 employees, manufacturing and supplying equipment worldwide. We've purchased two fundus cameras from them—devices many of our patients recognise during their eye exams, used by our optometrists and ophthalmologist to photograph the retina.

When Donny Thomas from Forus invited us to India, we didn't hesitate. Here was a chance to see how cutting-edge eye care technology is made.

Innovation and Precision

Forus isn't your typical medical device firm. Beyond fundus cameras, they're developing a paediatric refractometer—a tool to measure children's eye power—and testing two more devices. We had the rare opportunity to watch state-of-the-art machines being built from the ground up.

While in India, we also decided to see these devices in action. We visited Aravind Eye Hospital, one of the country's largest eye care chains with 10 clinics across the state. We landed at their Salem facility, and what we saw astonished us.

What We Expected vs. What We Found

India has significant poverty. Hygiene standards often fall short of Western expectations. We braced ourselves for one of two scenarios: either pristine cleanliness catering to wealthy patients, or the chaos that characterises Indian streets and traffic.

We were completely wrong.

What unfolded before us was a flawlessly functioning system. Every staff member knew their role. Work moved quickly and without error. Most importantly—despite the sheer volume of patients—wait times were minimal.

Aravind doesn't require appointments. You walk in. Within two hours, you've had every necessary eye exam and have your answers. If surgery is needed, it happens the next day. The clinic employs 14 surgeons, each performing 10–35 procedures daily—and this was before lunchtime.

The Lesson

Efficiency and excellence aren't luxuries reserved for wealthy nations. At KSA Silmakeskus, we perform over 55,000 procedures using advanced techniques like Flow3 flapless laser surgery and ICB lens replacement. Our entire clinical team chose Flow3 for their own vision—proof that we trust what we do.

What we witnessed in India reminded us: the best eye care systems prioritise precision, clear roles, and patient outcomes above all else. That's the standard we maintain every day in Tallinn.