Patient Stories

Joseph Mariyana was working abroad when a small mishap led to irreparable damage to his eyes. While washing clothes using a chemical named Clorox, a drop of the chemical fell into his left eye.

Joseph flew back to Goa and consulted with many doctors in a seemingly futile attempt to find a cure for the damage done to his eye. Doctors in Goa gave him medicines and eye drops, but none of those proved effective in improving his condition.

When Joseph first visited the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute, he had already lost vision in his left eye. Dr. Mukesh Taneja, who overlooked Joseph’s case at the institute, knew that preserving Joseph’s right eye was paramount to prevent Joseph from going blind.

Dr. Taneja learnt that Joseph had a condition known as Meibomitis, which led to repeated attacks of marginal keratitis in his right eye. In such types of corneas, the success rate of corneal transplants was very low, so the doctors decided not to conduct a transplant for him. Instead, the doctors decided to perform cataract surgery for Joseph.

The surgery was difficult since Joseph’s cornea was largely opaque. However, the experienced team of doctors at the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute were able to successfully complete the surgery. After the surgery, Joseph maintained a 20/50 vision and was able to go about his normal routine once again with ease.

Joseph feels immensely grateful for the support and empathy showed to him by the team of doctors. He credits Dr. Taneja’s assistance for his ability to see through one eye today. Joseph’s son believes that the understanding of people, clubbed with the latest technology is what makes the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute remarkable.  

For a working individual, the safety and health of his or her eyes is incredibly important, especially when one’s work involves any form of manual labour, where having perfect vision becomes paramount. However, due to the dangers involved in working in factories, these same workers often have to deal with a spectrum of different injuries.

Bajrang Singh worked in a chemical factory in Mumbai. Three years ago, Bajrang’s eyes were severely injured during an accident at his workplace. On a seemingly regular day, Bajrang had asked his coworkers to move a lot of chemicals from one place to another. During the shifting, some of the chemicals started slowly leaking out.

Bajrang quickly noticed that his coworkers had taken safety precautions and had worn protective eye gear. However, he had not worn any protective gear.  When the chemicals fell onto him, Bajrang felt a severe burning and had an immediate swelling in his eyes.

Bajrang visited the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute wherein he presented his case to Dr. Sayan Basu. Upon examination, Dr. Basu noted that the chemical had burnt the cells on the surface of Bajrang’s eyes. In addition to that, Bajrang had also sustained severe corneal damage. After a thorough examination, the doctors at the institute conducted a combination of stem cell therapy and corneal transplantation for Bajrang.

Thanks to the expertise of the doctors at the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute, Bajrang’s treatment went well. Bajrang was able to recover from his condition and even returned to work again. The doctors find it heartening to witness Bajrang’s recovery and see him regain normalcy in his life.

Bajrang had lost hope of being able to see again, but he now feels a deep sense of gratitude to the team of doctors who returned his vision to him. He now recommends the hospital’s family-like environment and treatment to everyone who seeks his opinion.

63-year-old Chandrawati Harijan lives in Mahilwar, Lumbini – 15 minutes west of Maya Devi Temple, the exact place where Lord Buddha was born more than 2500 years ago. Her home is a three-room poorly constructed concrete building that she shares with her husband, son, daughter-in-law, and four grandchildren. Her cattle, one buffalo and a calf share the same space – and one can notice the blurriness in boundaries, forcing us to ask one question. What divides her home from the cattle shed?

The community where Chandrawati lives comprises mostly Harijans. Harijans belong to the Dalit caste, the lowest caste within the Hindu caste system, and are also referred to as the ‘untouchables. Years of caste-based discrimination resulting in inequality of access to social goods have perpetuated their economic impoverishment. Dalits, like Chandrawati and her neighbours, are deprived of basic social goods. So much so, the entire community in which Chandrawati lives is built upon unclaimed land. She and her neighbours are squatters – and have no property to their name.

Coming from a poor socio-economic background, when cataracts blinded Chandrawati, all she could do was curse her stars. “I lost my eyesight gradually”, she shares her experience with us. “It wasn’t instant; I could feel that I was becoming blind. And the fact that I couldn’t do anything about it made me lose hope”.

“Earlier I used to help around the house and even used to assist the local midwife during deliveries. Today, I just sit around the house. Sometimes, when they have the time, they sit down to talk to me, else I try to make out what’s happening around me”, she shares her woes.

On the day we visited her, we got a firsthand experience of the social stigma of blindness. It was Holi when we reached Chandrawati’s home – the Hindu festival of colours. While all of her family members were smeared in different colours and were busy playing with each other, Chandrawati only had a small sprinkle of colour near her forehead – applied as a form of blessing.

Luckily, for Chandrawati, her neighbour worked at the Royal Thai Monastery in Lumbini. When word about an upcoming Cataract outreach surgery camp was being staged in Lumbini by the Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation, the neighbour duly informed Chandrawati’s family.

Two days after Holi, Chandrawati’s eyes were operated by Dr Sanduk Ruit, a world-leading eye surgeon who has cured over 130,000 people from cataract blindness. Together through their Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation alliance, Dr Ruit and Tej Kohli plan to screen one million and cure 300,000 by 2026.

The next morning after surgery, when Chandrawati’s bandages were opened at the Maya Devi Temple, she could not believe her eyes – literally. She and her husband were so elated, they shared a small dance in the sacred garden.

Later, we visited her home once again – there she was sitting in the same corner, but was happy that she could see what her neighbours, her grandchildren and everyone else were up to.

Meet Doraswamy, a tailor by profession, the breadwinner of a family of four. Being a tailor, his skills and his eyesight were once his greatest asset. For many years he seemed to be living a normal life and doing well providing for his family.

But unbeknown to many, for more than fifteen years Doraswamy was suffering from an eye problem that he was treated with medicines and drops. Over time these treatments stopped working and his vision got worse, with complaints of blurred vision and inability to open his eyes in bright light.  As his vision got compromised, he was no longer able to work as a tailor.  He could not even thread a needle by himself.

Doctor Jagdesh C. Reddy from Tej Kohli Cornea Institute discovered that Doraswamy has developed corneal scarring in the front part of the eyes, which was causing intense blurring and watery eyes when exposed to bright lights. The epidemiology of corneal blindness encompasses a wide range of inflammatory and infectious eye diseases that leads to corneal scarring, which ultimately causes blindness.  Both of Doraswamy’s eyes had developed black spots, so the anterior layers of the cornea needed to be removed.

With technological advances in the diagnostic, surgical, and nonsurgical treatment available in Swarna Bharat Eye Centre in Nellore district, a secondary centre of Tej Kohli Foundation, Doraswamy was, fortunately, able to receive treatment from experts.  The bumpy irregular layers from his eyes were removed with extreme caution and precision to avoid any sort of perforation.

Doraswamy is fine now and as his vision continued to improve as a result of intervention by the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute, he wishes to resume his tailoring services and earn money for his family.

The story of Doraswamy is not an isolated one. There are millions of Doraswamys out there, who are fighting against needless blindness and desperate to get treated so that they can get back to living a normal life.

Life is hard for people with blindness or impaired vision. Especially for people living in remote areas where they lack access to eye health services. Poverty and blindness are always closely linked. People from low-income backgrounds have a lack of access to and limited ability to pay for services when they are available, which was the case for Meera.

Meera hails from a low-income family in India, where she, along with her husband, work hard to make ends meet. She is a perfectly healthy woman, but unfortunately, she had become blind.

Meera was not blind by birth, but her vision started to deteriorate many years ago until she became blind. The symptoms were so slow that she didn’t realize that she would end up blind if she did not seek treatment. At first her eyes started to turn red and slowly became white. Then before she could realise the seriousness of what was happening, her eyesight was gone completely.

Her sudden vision loss made Meera’s life very difficult as she needed help with everything. To move around, she inched step-by-step carefully while hanging on to her husband`s arm.  She was completely dependent and isolated.

Meera’s consulted local doctors only to find out that her poverty impeded her treatment. She was informed that an operation was needed to treat her, but it was too expensive for her poor family and success was not guaranteed. Meera felt helpless because of her inability to pay such a hefty treatment cost. They lost all hope and surrendered the fate of a vicious cycle that left Meera unable to work to earn the money she needed for treatment.

After 5 years of being blind, a doctor told Meera about the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute, and her journey towards renewal of hope and vision began. Meera was soon diagnosed with Glaucoma, a condition that damages the optical nerve and which is ranked as the second leading cause of blindness after cataract by the WHO.  Meera also had Schelo Keratitis, a rare condition where the cornea becomes inflamed or swollen.

The Tej Kohli Cornea Institute offered to treat her at no cost and successfully operated on Meera. Today, Meera has completely regained her vision and confidence. Her children and her husband trust and support her decision to seek help from Tej Kohli Cornea Institute.