Poor people operated for Cataract for free by Dr Narpat Solanki, Project Drishti

In 1975, a 20 year old medicine aspirant from Rajasthan followed the diktat of his father, a chartered accountant and set out to pursue a professional career in medicine. At the end of his graduate study, he sought to specialize in general surgery but was handed out ophthalmology. Today, twenty-two-years on, Dr Narpat Solanki’s professional palate is a tale of what he describes as “My father’s dream and God’s plan; not my cake.”

He is seen in many roles in many places. You may find him in Karnataka’s rural backyards like Chitradurga and Gauribidanur conducting camps, performing surgeries or even screening eyes alongside his team of trained professionals or you may find him in strife-torn Cambodia and fast-developing Indonesia training fellow professionals under the Rotary International banner. If neither, you may find him at his Bangalore-headquartered Mahaveer Eye Hospital – attending to patients, performing surgeries, interacting with an international group of professionals who are training under him and also fulfilling his managerial responsibilities as director of MEH.

And, there is more to “God’s plan or destiny” in his life. In January 1987, the then young professional was only visiting his ailing grandmother in Bangalore and the city simply ended up becoming his home base. While the closely-knit Jain population in Bangalore was only too happy to have one of their own to rely on, to his credit, the man born with a silver spoon in his mouth saw it as a call to serve. Dr Solanki saw to it that his reach broke the barriers of class, community, social and economic. The special camps that he holds for the mentally challenged, the jail inmates and senior citizens, the AIDS and leprosy afflicted are a reflection of the same.

Against Odds

The crust of his work is however Project Drishti, which was started in July 2001 to reach quality eye care to the poor and under-privileged sections of society. It is an effort that has seen Dr Solanki and his 45-member team going to the doorstep of the target population in some 12 districts in the State. Working with the local administration and non-governmental organizations, team Project Drishti has till date screened over 10 lakh(1 Million) people including 1.32-lakh school-going children and conducted about 95,000 free eye surgeries. Almost one-camp-a-day is the order of things at Project Drishti.

The run has been anything but easy. For service-minded professionals, it has been sorrowful to see invaluable infrastructure at the government hospitals in district centers put to little use, while they struggled with the logistics of reaching care to people far off from their operational base. “The assessment of the utilization rate of equipment in district hospitals will reveal a sad story. Hardly 10 per cent of the available eye care infrastructure is put use”, observes Dr Solanki, while also regretting the government’s “lack of openness” in allowing private players to adopt primary health care centers. The least that the government can do is let medical groups and teams like Project Drishti avail its space and infrastructure in the rural limits, he says.

In the large context, Dr Solanki wants to push forward the case for health clinics for students in government-run primary schools. It is an investment in “health consciousness” the government needs to make in the future interests of the country. A health certificate must become as important a qualifying-document as birth certificate, he opines.

Dr Solanki’s work has been recognized and feted aplenty and it includes ‘Karnataka Rajyothsava Award’, the highest civilian award by the government of his adopted state. That is however not to mean rest from work and service. Setting up eye care clinics in rural areas on public-private partnership basis and spreading knowledge by expanding the professional training activities of MEH are the goals for the immediate future.

As he puts it “Service has given me the achievements. We (at MEH) set our own targets and strive to fulfill it 110 per cent.” As an after thought, he adds, “Self confidence is a thing about it. For, when you are working with good intentions, things will see themselves through.”

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