June 2026 marks the completion of one year since we began Project CHASHMA in Sundargarh district of Odisha with our partners the L.V.Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI). We wanted to take a moment, not to send out a press release, but just to share with you where this past year has taken us..
When we set out in June of last year, the goal sounded almost too ambitious. Screen 50,000 children for vision problems across the tribal blocks of Sundargarh, Odisha, give free spectacles to every child who needed them, refer the more complex cases for surgery and rehabilitation, and build a small ecosystem of trained teachers and Anganwadi workers who would keep watching long after we were gone. Sundargarh is not an easy district. In Rajgangpur, 81% of the population is from Scheduled Tribe communities. In Kutra, it is 75%. For many families, the nearest eye specialist is hours away. A child who cannot see the blackboard quietly falls behind, and most of the time, no one ever finds out why.
As of the middle of May, our team had screened 51,806 children. We exceeded the original 50,000 target. Of those, 927 children were confirmed to have refractive errors and were given free spectacles. 26 children who had incurable and irreversible vision conditions received low vision and rehabilitation support for more complex conditions, including cerebral visual impairment, infantile nystagmus, albinism, and developmental delays. Such children were referred to the upstream Vision-Aid Resource Center in Bhubaneshwar on the LVPEI campus. Several children who could benefit from surgical interventions underwent surgery at the LVPEI tertiary centre, including pediatric cataracts and squint corrections.
Numbers are useful, but they are not really the point. Let’s talk about four children, because their stories also show the impact.
Baby Ridhima is one year old. Her parents had noticed she did not make eye contact, did not reach for toys, did not seem to see them when they leaned in close. She was identified during an Anganwadi screening and diagnosed with Cerebral Visual Impairment along with exotropia. She was given spectacles and vision stimulation therapy, and a rehabilitation team member visited her at home to coach her parents through it. Her parents now bring her to the Vision-Aid CVI Centre regularly (this CVI Centre was established with gracious support from Manorama Chowdhary and Bhaskar Panigrahi), and her visual behaviour has visibly improved. A baby with CVI in a remote village would, in most parts of India, simply never be seen. Ridhima was seen, and is receiving the care she needs now.
Ruhan is three. He has oculocutaneous albinism, with light-sensitive eyes, nystagmus, and significant refractive error. He had been lost to follow-up before our team re-identified him. After a full evaluation, he was given tinted glasses fitted in our low vision clinic. His parents describe a different child now, calmer in sunlight, more engaged at home.
Mishba is 14. She had a developmental cataract in her right eye and a coexisting squint, conditions she had simply lived with. She underwent successful cataract surgery at the LVPEI tertiary centre, with dramatic improvement in vision. Encouraged by what she can now see, she has agreed to come back for squint surgery as well. She has decades of life ahead of her with her sight restored.
Arpit is 8. His outward eye deviation had been with him since birth, and his family had no idea it could be corrected. He was identified during a school screening, underwent successful squint surgery, and his father has become a quiet evangelist in his village for what is possible. That, more than anything else, is how lasting public health change is actually made: one family at a time, telling the next family.
What I find myself thinking about most, a year in, is the quiet work that does not show up in any report. The phone calls field workers made to parents and teachers to remind them about the referral appointment. The bus fare covered for families who could not afford it. The repeated awareness sessions at Anganwadi centres for mothers who had never heard the word “amblyopia”. The trained ASHA workers and Anganwadi staff in every village we touched, who are now permanent vision screeners in their communities, long after we have moved on to the next block. That patient, unglamorous work is the actual programme. The screening numbers are just what it produces.
We want to be careful not to overclaim. We touched just four blocks of just one district. There are nearly a million children in Sundargarh alone, and many millions more across the rural and tribal districts of Odisha and neighbouring states who today have no access to pediatric eye care of any kind. So Phase 1, with 50,000+ children, even though it is a huge number in itself, is really only the proof of concept. The work ahead is much larger.
In Phase 2, our plan is to screen 200,000+ children across rural and tribal areas that today have no access to these services at all. We are starting to put together the planning, funding, and capacity to make it possible.
We also want to single out the team at our implementing partner, L V Prasad Eye Institute, Odisha. It is a very large team, and with a salute to the entire team, in particular we want to thank Dr. Debasmita Majhi, the pediatric ophthalmologist who has anchored the clinical side of this programme from day one. Dr. Debasmita has spent the last year travelling to some of the most remote and difficult corners of Sundargarh, day after day, with her team. The surgeries that restored Mishba’s sight and corrected Arpit’s squint, the careful diagnoses that gave Ridhima and Ruhan a path forward, the patient counselling of families who had never met an eye doctor before, all of that ran through her and her team. Her dedication to rural and tribal children, and the dedication of the entire LVPEI Rajgangpur team who go out with her, is the reason CHASHMA actually works on the ground. Thank you, Dr. Debasmita, and thank you to the whole LVPEI team.
