R.K. Seth

Founder

Founder of Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre

R.K. Seth is the founder of Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre (1986)[1], an Indian non-profit working on healthcare from New Delhi.

Rajendra Kumar Seth (died 29 January 1996) was an Indian ophthalmologist and philanthropist who founded the Venu Charitable Society and, under it, the Venu Eye Institute and Research Centre in Delhi.

He gave up an established private practice to build a model of affordable and accessible eye care for people who could not otherwise obtain treatment.

Early life and education

Seth graduated in medicine at Amritsar Medical College and took his master's degree at Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi, in 1966.

Career

Seth worked as a consultant at Tirath Ram and Jessa Ram hospitals and at St Stephen's Hospital in Delhi, and during the 1970s ran clinics at Kamla Nagar, Chandni Chowk, Defence Colony and Greater Kailash I, as well as making weekly visits to Agra and Muzaffarnagar.

In the summer of 1976 he suffered two heart attacks in succession. He subsequently decided to give up his practice of some fifteen years and devote his skills to eye care for the poor, using his savings and equipment as the founding endowment. Venu was established in 1980.

The Venu Eye Institute and Research Centre was set up in 1986 under the Venu Charitable Society on a campus at Sheikh Sarai in south Delhi, providing preventive, curative and rehabilitative eye care. Seth died on 29 January 1996 at the age of 56.

Recognition

The Dr R. K. Seth Memorial Award for Community Ophthalmology is given in his memory; the ophthalmologist R. V. Ramani received it in 2006.[2][3]

Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre

Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre, run by the Venu Charitable Organisation in Sheikh Sarai, New Delhi, has been correcting vision for over 40 years through its network of five eye hospitals and outreach camps. A large share of its surgeries are free or subsidised for economically weaker patients, including under Delhi government free-treatment schemes.

Venu Eye Institute & Research Centre reports the following, on its own site: