Sewa Sadan Eye Hospital was conferred with the prestigious LOTUS Award for Holistic Development of an Organisation to Serve Community Better. The award which carries a memento and a cash prize of Rs 50,000 was presented at the Vision 2020 India’s 16 annual national conference and hosted by Siliguri Greater Lions Eye Hospital on 3 & 4 September 2022.
Managing Trustee of SSEH, Shri LC Janiyani received the award from Lion Mr AP Singh, former Vice president Lions International Foundation and Mr RN Mohanty, President, Vision 2020 India.
Advisor, Col. (Retd) Dr. Madan Deshpande, Administrator, Kushal Dharmani and Programme Manager, Manoj Dhawadiya were also present at the inaugural function.
The main purpose of the LOTUS award is to inspire eye care organizations to focus on development and growth along with making eye care available, accessible and affordable. The award was instituted in 2017.
Nisha Solanki belongs to a large family of two brothers and four sisters (of whom 3 are married). Both her brothers and elder sister attend school. Nisha’s father is mentally challenged. The responsibility of earning is on the mother, who is a daily wage farm labourer and grandmother, who tends to her goats. Two earing members for a family of ten.
Blindness in children leads to deep impact on psychological, emotional, and socioeconomic growth to the family. A child with blindness is more likely to have delays in developmental milestones, to be more frequently hospitalized, and die during childhood than a sighted child. Such severe vision loss also adversely effects the educational activities, orientation, and mobility from the early stage of life resulting in lack of employment privilege. These differential characteristics between a sighted and non-sighted child is more obvious in developing countries. Moreover, the disability adjusted life years (DALY) loss in a blind child is far more than that of adults with blindness.