This month, LVPEI’s Bhosle Gopal Rao Patil Eye Centre in Mudhole, a 25-bed secondary eye care facility, has performed over 100,000 surgeries since its inception—a vision that was articulated at its founding.
Thirty years ago, Mudhole village was a brown speck in the dry and deciduous Deccan landscape to the north of Hyderabad. Part of what was then Adilabad district, Mudhole was one of many thousands of villages in India whose development parameters were a cause for concern. Mudhole became a site for LVPEI’s first secondary care facility, thanks to the generous support of the Christian Blind Mission (CBM), Sightsavers International, GRAM, a local NGO, and Sri Narayana Rao Patil, a local politician.
The LVPEI network is a large-volume network—we provide over 2.6 million services and over 200,000 surgeries a year. Our eye care model aspires for rural, secondary centres performing close to 250-300 surgeries every month to tackle the incidence and handle the backlog of care, especially for cataract. The secondary centre at Mudhole has maintainedthat steady clip like a metronome for 30 years! Over years, our data has shown us that blindness and vision impairment in the centre’s service area have dropped by 26%, while effective cataract surgical coverage (eCSC) has risen from 10% to 45%. The centre engendered this health-seeking behaviour in these populations by building trust over the years.
The Bhosle Gopal Rao Patil Eye Centre in Mudhole was also the site for many complex surgeries, many of which are rarely offered in rural hospitals. Our teams performed the first orbit surgery and the first corneal transplant in a rural setting at Mudhole. In fact, our surgeons at the Mudhole centre also performed partial-thickness corneal transplants, a procedure that most urban centres in India still don’t have the capacity to offer their patients. Many of India’s famous eye doctors had spent time training at Mudhole: Ashok Nanda, Umang Mathur, Partho Mandal, and Ashi Khurana to name a few; including many from LVPEI’s senior leadership.
Over the years, the Mudhole centre has not only delivered high volume care but consistently outstanding outcomes. Rural eye care models once struggled with poor post surgical outcomes, especially complications like endophthalmitis. In striking contrast, Mudhole has maintained negligible endophthalmitis rates for decades, including more than ten consecutive years without a single case. A recent LVPEI study showed that over 91% of patients regained 6/12 vision or better, underscoring the centre’s exceptional clinical quality.
The centre’s impact extends beyond numbers. Since inception, it has restored sight to 45,000–50,000 people—nearly 60% of them women with close to 60% of surgeries provided at no cost to communities spread across northern Telangana and deep into southern Maharashtra.
Adding to its legacy of excellence, the Bhosle Gopal Rao Patil Eye Centre was the first secondary centre to achieve the NABH Pre-Entry Level Standard Certification under the Small Healthcare Organization (SHCO) Accreditation Program.
As the centre crosses the milestone of 100,000 surgeries, Mudhole stands today not just as a successful rural eye‑care model, but as one of LVPEI’s finest examples of how world‑class quality can thrive even in the most underserved regions.
