Tell HN: Did you know that you can help restore a person’s eyesight for $50?

> I pay $1 to have an eye test. I can come two more times in the next three months and I will not be charged. I first do a glaucoma test, and then I am tested for vision, and then examined for a detailed uveitis test an eye disease which I suffered in my youth ... The hospital is spanking clean. Everyday it sees 1200 patients and the doctors perform over 200 operations. But then this is only the beginning of an amazing story. It is part of a network of eye hospitals that has seen 32 million patients in 36 years, and performed more than 4 million eye surgeries most of them ultra-subsidized or free.

> Here, the patient has the choice to decide whether to pay or not. In a country where a huge majority of people live on less than $2 a day he ripped of the price tag for access to world class quality eye care ... Today the Aravind Eye Care System is the largest provider of eye surgeries in the world. They see more than three million patients and perform over 300,000 surgeries a year. That is almost 7 percent of the global total. And their record of proficiency is better than that of the UK health care system.

Source: An Infinite Vision: The Story of Aravind Eye Hospital - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/an-infinite-vision-the-st_b_1...

> Using a highly efficient surgical model and variable pricing, this hospital chain has reduced cataract blindness in Tamil Nadu, India, by more than 50 percent and serves all patients regardless of ability to pay.

> Forty years ago, blindness caused primarily by cataracts was widespread in India, rendering almost 13 million people unable to see, even though the condition was relatively easy to correct surgically ... From its modest start with 11 beds, Aravind has grown to perform more than 250,000 cataract surgeries a year. And the rate of cataract blindness in Tamil Nadu has been cut roughly in half.

> Aravind's business model worked because it developed a radically efficient surgical model, with each surgeon performing an average of 2,000 surgeries per year, compared to 300 annually elsewhere in India. Plus it still maintained the dignity of patients while continuing to deliver world-class surgical quality. For example, Aravind's rate of complications is half that of the United Kingdom's National Health Service ... In 1992, it built a manufacturing facility to make its own intraocular lenses, a key element of modern cataract surgery—driving down the cost per lens from about $70 to $2.

Source: https://www.bridgespan.org/aravind-eye-hospital

"[W]e suppose that a program costs $5 per person screened, that 20% of those screened receive cataract surgery at a cost of $15 for transportation and $25 for the direct cost of surgery, that 10% of those who receive surgery are blind or severely visually impaired, and that surgery is 100% effective. This program spends $650 per blindness or severe visual impairment reversed. We are highly uncertain about how close these estimated values are to the true costs and uptake of programs."

Both my parents, of old age, have cataracts. My mother can't see a thing with his right eye; my father is almost in the same condition. Without social security the operation would cost millions (COP$) that I can't afford.

Whereas with social security it would be almost for free. But they've hold my mother from the operation _since before the pandemic_ for all sorts of excuses - no turns, the pandemic itself, and now it's that they will put an internal lens in her eye but it hasn't arrived from where they get from (USA?). Literally last year went calling and going to the hospital asking if they would be operating her soon, but the answer is always the same. It's so tiring for me, imagine for them.

This is wrong. idk anyone who believes this