More than 10 million Indians are blind. The challenge of providing quality eye care under these circumstances is daunting, to say the least. However, Indian ophthalmology has risen to this challenge admirably and today ophthalmic care in India is among the best in the world. India has approximately 10,000 ophthalmologists, a ratio of approximately 1 ophthalmologist per 100,000 people, a situation better than most developing countries and close to what prevails in the United Kingdom.
Infrastructural facilities range from state of the art to grossly suboptimal in nature.
During the past year, over 3.5 million surgical procedures were performed for cataracts, a remarkable feat by any standard. The need, however, is even greater. The two major barriers for inaccessibility of eye care are unequal distribution of ophthalmologists and gross underutilization of those available. Nearly half of all ophthalmologists have a negligible surgical practice. Any effective strategy to combat blindness must correct these two problems.