On March 2nd, CBI family traveled to Keonjhar, Odisha in India to celebrate the opening of the Bijayananda Patnaik Eye Center. The eye center is the collaboration of three partners, CBI with support from the Jack DeLoss Taylor Foundation, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute and the Bijayananda Painaik family. The Patnaik family provided their ancestral land for this center, CBI supported the building of the center and its equipment and L.V. Prasad Eye Institute will incorporate its tiered model to run the center.

The system works with a tertiary hospital in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Odisha, a secondary eye center in Keonjhar, and many primary vision screening centers in rural areas. The patients will be given minor treatment, provided with glasses, and screened for more serious diseases at their vision screening center and, if further treatment is needed, transported to secondary center in Keonjhar or tertiary eye center in Bhubaneshwar where they will be provided with the necessary outpatient and surgical procedures to treat blindness. The center functions on a sliding pay scale. This varied network combined with a sliding pay scale will bring about sustainability in two to three years.

Dr. Catherine Taylor welcomes new hospital staff

The center is projected to provide services to over a million people in and around Keonjhar. On its first day, staff at the center were able to examine and treat 28 patients. In its first month, the Bijayananda Patnaik Eye Center has seen 1,113 patients, performed 11 surgeries, and distributed 160 spectacles. CBI is very proud of this partnership and the impact this center will have on providing access to quality eye care in a region that had so little access to such care.