Sankara Eye Care Institutions (SECI) has won the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Health Care Excellence Award for the third time in a row! The award was presented in a ceremony on Thursday, September 8, 2011 in New Delhi.
FICCI Health Care Excellence Award recognizes the contribution of health care providers in delivering quality health care to patients and increasing the reach in rural and remote areas. This year FICCI adopted “Innovation and Sustainability in Health Care” as a main criterion for evaluating the participants from across the Country.
SECI won the award in a prestigious category “Addressing Industry Issues,” which looked at such key concern areas as taking eye care to the masses, implementing a successful public-private partnership model, reducing the cost of health care and enhancing the availability of talent through education and training. The finalists competing for the award were some established and well known hospitals like Apollo, Fortis, and two other Corporate Hospitals. SECI was unanimously chosen as a winner based on the strength of the structured and comprehensive preventive and curative community eye care program, supported by the state-of-the-art base hospital services and logistical capability.
The jury comprised of Former Chief Justice of India RC Lokati, Secretary General of Quality Council of India Giridhar J Gyani, President of Public Health Foundation of India K Srinath Reddy, and Chairman and Managing Director of Astron Consultants, Y P Bhatia.
SECI had won the FICCI Healthcare Excellence Award for the first time in 2009, in the category “Best Community Driven Healthcare Program.” The Gift of Vision Community Outreach Program received this award for the scale and impact achieved by the program, with more than 500,000 surgeries in 2009. Today, we are proud to say that the initiative has exceeded 750,000 free eye surgeries.
SECI won the FICCI award again in 2010 in the category “For taking health care to the masses.” The Rainbow program, which had screened over 4 million children for undetected visual defects, was chosen for this prestigious award. An eminent panel of jurists headed by Former Chief Justice of Supreme Court Sri Lahotte, along with the official tabulators, Ernest & Young, selected SECI as the winner. The then Honorable Minister of state for Health and Family Welfare Sri Dinesh Trivedi presented the award in New Delhi to SECI, in the presence of prominent individuals like Ms.Shabana Azmi and Sri.Kamal Hassan.
This award reaffirms our commitment and the impact and progress made by Sankara in its mission to eradicate curable blindness in rural India. We are excited to share the news with our supporters and generous donors who have contributed to the progress of this mission, and look forward to forging ahead together and scaling new heights.
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Please visit www.giftofvision.org to learn more about SEF.