Govindappa Venkataswamy

Govindappa Venkataswamy (1918 to 2006), widely known as Dr V., was an Indian ophthalmologist who devoted his career to ending needless blindness. He founded Aravind Eye Hospitals and chaired it for many years, and he is best known for a high quality, high volume, low cost model of eye care that has restored sight to millions of people. More than half of the patients treated by the Aravind system pay nothing or only a heavily subsidised fee. Crippled by rheumatoid arthritis at the age of thirty, he nonetheless trained as an eye surgeon and performed over one hundred thousand operations himself. While in government service he helped pioneer the eye camp, and he received the Padma Shri from the Government of India in 1973. In 1992 he and his Aravind partners founded Aurolab, which cut the price of the intraocular lens to a tenth of the international price, and in 1996 the Lions Aravind Institute for Community Ophthalmology was founded under his leadership to help others copy the model.