Coimbatore : Dr. R. V. Ramani, the Founder and Managing Trustee has been awarded the prestigious “Padma Shri” by Government of India in recognition of his work in the field of medical services.

Born in Coimbatore in the year 1947,Dr Ramani heads one of the largest super speciality eye hospitals in India.

Inspired and blessed by the Sankaracharyas of Kanchi, this humanitarian Movement was initiated 41 years ago with the setting up of Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Medical Centre, in 1977 which later became the Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Medical Trust, a Registered Public Charitable Trust in India.

Sankara Eye Hospitals work on an 80:20 ratio, providing world class eye care with a social impact, as 80 per cent of the beneficiaries are the underprivileged who receive completely free services, while the remaining 20 are the patients who can afford to pay for their treatment, thereby cross-subsidising and enabling the hospital to be self-sustaining.

The hospitals have so far performed 1.8 million absolutely free eye surgeries, positively impacting beneficiaries’ health and livelihood.

The rural outreach eye care programme, Gift of Vision, was initiated in 1990 along with Rotary Coimbatore Central and serves the rural population in 92 districts across 7 states in India.

Gift of Vision has so far conducted over 26,138 rural outreach camps, screened 4.8 million people and performed over 1.8 million free vision restoration surgeries.