Kamala Sundaram Foundation for Twinkling Little Eyes, a not-for-profit body, established in 2005; was born out of the desire expressed by Dr A P J Abdul Kalam (former President of India) on his visit to Aditya Jyot Eye Hospital to put a twinkle in the eyes of the visually impaired. AJFTLE works with a mission to alleviate the suffering of the poor and aims to prevent avoidable blindness through awareness generation, eye screening and providing access to quality eye care at an affordable cost.
The Foundation runs outreach programs in rural and urban slums and tribal areas that strive to provide quality eye care for the underprivileged. With our out-reach programs aiming to redress the suffering of low income groups, marginalized population living in rural and urban slums and tribal areas in our state through free eye camps and free eye treatment.
It has numerous projects focused on creating awareness, screening and providing comprehensive eye care services to prevent avoidable blindness. The organization takes special interest in promoting eye donation.
Kamala sundaram foundation is mainly working in underserved areas of Mumbai and some parts of Maharashtra. The focus areas of field operations are slums of Mumbai, surrounding tribal areas and certain districts in Maharashtra.
- The organisation started its charitable activities with eye screening camps in schools and slum areas. After inception, AJFTLE progressed by initiating 2 satellite centres in Dharavi and Mankhurd areas to cater to the eye care needs of slum population.
- Now, it has expanded its services by establishing more centres in Kandivali and Mulund slum areas.
- In 2010, AJFTLE embarked on a massive screening campaign in association with World Diabetes Foundation (Denmark) to combat diabetic related blindness and to increase awareness in urban slums of Mumbai. AJFTLE has covered major slum pockets in the 23 wards of Mumbai.
- The organisation has established an Advanced Vitreo retinal centre in Mulund to provide retinal services at affordable rates.
- It also focusses on Research in the field of ophthalmology and has established a Genetic Laboratory to do extensive research in eye genetics; Ophthalmic image reading centres for providing high quality grading of eye images received from remote areas enabling timely diagnosis and intervention.
- Nearly 1,80,000 households have been enumerated capturing a large amount of demographic data.
- Nearly 20,000 subjects are screened annually for Diabetes and Diabetics Retinopathy.
- Our diabetic retinopathy project has been recognized as one of the most difficult projects to ever have been implemented in such difficult conditions by the World Diabetes Federation.
- The Foundation was also the recipient of the Spirit of Humanity Awards for its work in the community.
- We have covered major slum pockets of Dharavi and Mankhurdunder pediatric screening project.
- Approximately 5000 patients are getting treatment from our outreach center in a year and around 10000 get benefited through extended camp activities.
- More than1000 patients were referred to base hospital for medical and surgical interventions in the past year and were treated at subsidized rates.
- More than 3000 children have been screened through our screening camps.
- Around 500 surgical procedures including cataract surgery, squint surgery, laser and injections for retinal problems and retinal surgery were done by foundation.
- Annually more than 500 Diabetes and eye screening camps are being organized by the Foundation.
- Till date, we have conducted more than1400 camps in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra.
- We have touched the lives of about one million people and screened school & orphan children, truck drivers, police personnel and other social groups through eye camps.
- We have established DSIR recognized R &D unit.