If you have 4 minutes... a short story about Dr. V. and how he tried to cure avoidable blindness.

"Someone who's already tackling the world's biggest problems with creative solutions and entrepreneurial ventures"

Dr. Venkataswamy, nowadays well known through several case studies, totally fits to this description and I would call him my “social innovation hero”.

The Problem: avoidable blindness (~ 45 million people in the world are blind, 80 % of them could be cured through surgery) and: government which alone cannot meet the health needs

The Solution: Dr. V used a kind of franchise mechanism to deliver eye care services in India

A short overview… if you have 2 minutes….

Aravind Eye Hospital was founded in 1976, by Dr. G. Venkataswamy, (often simply Dr. V.) started in an 11 bed hospital manned by 4 medical officers. Aravind Eye Care System now has 4,000 beds in seven hospitals, most in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

I choose him because I think we can learn things from him in order to create new business opportunities in developing countries. So why was he successful?

Partnerships:
Dr. V used the power of strong partnerships: Seva and Aravind collaborated in research, shared technology and resources, placement of expert volunteers, staff development in order to subsidize the cost of cataract surgery.

Optimization of efficiency:
Usually the procedure takes less than 10 minutes, 30 to 40 surgeries can be performed a day, low waiting times --> high productivity and squeezing out profits made by middlemen in the production and distribution chain

Create a surplus through high quality to help the poor:
Aravind surgeons have just half the number of complications that the British health system has for the same procedure. The high quality allows Aravind to attract patients who are willing to pay market rates. Then it takes the operating surplus made on those surgeries to fund free and subsidized surgeries for poor people --> Two‑third of the outpatient visits and three‑fourth of the surgeries were serviced to the poor, FREE OF COST. The average payment is $75 (for those that can pay).

Deal with limited resources:
Dr V. has to overcome a shortage in material: There were too few lense donations and a limitation by the high costs of the lenses (several hundred dollars to buy) --> Aravind sets up its own LENS MANUFACTURER on-site (subsidiary named Aurolab, now sells ~ 1.8 million lenses per year) with the help of an American social entrepreneur named David Green. Aurolab was then providing some lenses at the astoundingly low price of just $2.

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If you have another 2 minutes...

… pls leave a comment. ;-)
As I didn’t contact anybody, I won’t tag it as an “ACT”, nevertheless it would make me happy if you tell me what you think about the story.

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(facts: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/29/142526263/india-eye-care-center-finds...; http://www.aravind.org/aboutus/genesis.aspx)