Eyeworld

44 | EYEWORLD | SPRING 2026 ASCRS NEWS Contact info@ascrsfoundation.org Aravind has been significant. He said sharing Aravind's best practices, the systems, software, spreadsheets, and offering training programs to develop their team has enabled this process. This helps other hospitals so they don't have to depend solely on their NGOs for support, and they can generate demand, do quality work, and be self-reliant. Dr. Venkatesh and Dr. Haripriya have both been involved in this type of training and visit- ing different hospitals sharing this knowledge. "We go there, do a visit to understand their local needs and their local facilities, and bring them as a team here to one of our facilities, mostly at Madurai," he said. "The team is usually com- prised of the hospital administrator, the doctor, the paramedic staff in charge, and other key people. We show them how we work, we show them a small satellite center, and we sit with them and do planning for the next 3–5 years, mainly on these three areas—demand genera- tion, quality work, and becoming self-reliable." Then they are able to go back and start utilizing what they have learned. Dr. Venkatesh has been involved in sever- al projects in Kenya, Malawi, Congo, and has recently been working with the Cure Blindness team at Cape Coast in Ghana with Geoff Tabin, MD, and a few colleagues, setting up an eye hospital inside the Cape Coast general hospital, and separately setting up an eye department. The founder of Aravind believed that you have to develop the local talent, Dr. Venkatesh said. "You have to develop the local people to take care of their own problems," he said. "You have to work with those hospitals that are already existing or the new hospitals that are coming up with the support of NGOs." Since the early 2000s, Dr. Haripriya, Dr. Venkatesh, and others have been regularly attending international conferences. Over the last 2 decades, we have been leading courses at the ASCRS Annual Meeting quite regularly, Dr. Haripriya said, and at various other conferences. We share new techniques and updates but also focus on MSICS because we find this technique is widely applicable, especially in the developing world, where the cataracts are advanced, and it's difficult to access phaco technology and the newer lenses, she said. "I think this technique is very useful, even for those practicing in the U.S. We do work with a couple of residency programs in the U.S., and some of the residents who come to train with us spend about 3 weeks, primarily learning how to do the MSICS tech- nique," she said. "They learn how to do MSICS because they're interested in global ophthalmol- ogy and will also be able to apply it to the dense nuclear cataracts in their own practice." Being chosen for the award Dr. Haripriya and Dr. Venkatesh were surprised and grateful to receive this year's Chang-Cran- dall Humanitarian Award. "This was a complete surprise, and the last thing I expected," Dr. Haripriya said. "It was really special for both of us. Because this is also Aravind's Golden Jubilee year, I think it means a lot for us to be recipients because we are representing the larger Aravind family, and this means so much to everyone here, especially because now we have a large team of doctors from Aravind visiting the ASCRS [Annual Meet- ing] every year. Considering all the previous awardees, we're truly honored." "We believe that this award is for the Ara- vind Eye Care System," Dr. Venkatesh said. He said the award will be utilized for the best pos- sible evidence-based care, around sustainability, training, and teaching. "Dr. Haripriya and Venkatesh are ophthal- mologists well known to ASCRS, who have contributed significantly to the overall advance- ment of excellence in our field as cataract sur- geons," said Lisa Park, MD, chair of the ASCRS Foundation Nominating Committee. She said Dr. Haripriya is recognized for her surgical ex- pertise and publications from the last 10 years summarizing the outcomes of millions of phaco and manual cataract extractions at Aravind, confirming the impact of intracameral moxi- floxacin on endophthalmitis reduction. Dr. Park said that Dr. Venkatesh has shown it is possible to minimize surgical waste in the operating room and revolutionized thinking about carbon emissions and sustainable healthcare delivery, resulting in ASCRS' EyeSustain initiative. "Their nomination for the Chang-Crandall Humanitarian Award is to recognize their lead- ership in an organization, the Aravind Eye Care System," she said. "They have each performed nearly 100,000 surgeries, many of these being charitable cases." Editors' note: Visit www.EyeWorld.org to read an extended version of this article. continued from page 42

• Cover