Patients and the Punjab: UK eye specialists take 'Right to Sight' project to India

A team from the UK consisting of four optometrists, an ophthalmologist, a GP and three dispensing assistants have just returned from a ‘Right to Sight’ project which consisted of knowledge transfer lectures/workshops and primary care clinics where patients were either treated, listed for surgery or dispensed spectacles.

The project was initially conceived on a trip to the Punjab in 2012 where colleagues and I visited a charitable hospital. Here I noticed a need for better education and provision of eye care for the vulnerable and poorest in this society. Working alongside a humanitarian ophthalmologist, Dr Jasdeep Sandhu from the San Sanwan Charitable Hospital, the team put together a programme of teaching for nursing students, optometry students and ophthalmologists.