On a recent trip to India to attend the 2025 Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology conference, QEI’s Professor Mark Radford travelled to Chitrakoot, India—one of the world’s largest rural eye hospitals. Chitrakoot is in the Madhya Pradesh region, a four-and-a-half-hour journey from Delhi by plane and car.
The visit to Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya (SNC) hospital aimed to foster collaboration on research, education and training to enhance patient care in both countries.
Professor Radford talked about building the Chitrakoot facilities’ research capacity, with Australian ophthalmologists potentially sharing supervision of research students, assisting in research design, drawing up ethics protocols, and sharing knowledge about research registries.
Together with other members of RANZCO’s Global Eye Health Committee (GEHC), Professor Radford explored how India’s rural innovation might be applied to GEHC activities in the Pacific and Timor Leste.
Sadguru Netra Chikitsalaya (SNC) hospital is one of four hospitals operated by the Shri Sadguru Seva Sangh Trust (SSSST), providing quality, high-volume care in rural settings. Last year alone it delivered more than 2 million eyecare outpatient visits and 217 thousand eye surgeries. SSSST is renowned as an international training centre for ophthalmology and operates an extensive outreach network throughout Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
