Rotary Club sponsors annual Dr Rustam D Ranji Rotary Award and Lecture at L V Prasad Eye Institute
Rotary Club of Hyderabad, represented by some of their members, presented Dr G N Rao a cheque for the purchase of ophthalmic equipment used in the examination and diagnostic rooms of the Glaucoma Out-Patient clinic. The Rotary Club of Hyderabad District 3150 along with support from other Rotary Clubs of Hyderabad and Secunderabad put together a matching grant that enabled the Rotary Club International Foundation to donate this fund to L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI).
Professor Brigitte Roeder, a world-renowned behavioural scientist and full Professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany who has been working with ophthalmologists at LVPEI for many years is inspired by LVPEI’s core values – Equity, Efficiency and Excellence with its overarching goal of ‘so that all may see’. A Rotarian herself, she encouraged her Rotarian colleagues to offer support for the patients at LVPEI. “This move has brought the Rotarians of both cities together to help on this noble theme of ‘so that all may see’,” said Professor Brigitte Roeder.
Professor Roeder has contributed a significant sum from her personal funds as well towards this goal. Some of her colleagues at Hamburg have also been impressed with LVPEI’s work and have donated their personal funds towards this endeavour. The LVPEI team expressed its gratitude to Professor Brigitte Roeder both for her collaboration in research, and her successful efforts towards bringing in the Rotarians of Hamburg in their “service and dedication to world understanding and peace through international service programs.”
Professor Brigitte Roeder has been interested in how the human brain adjusts itself when it is challenged with deficits such deafness (hearing loss) or blindness (loss of eyesight). She had been working on what happens to the brain of a baby born with cataract (loss of sight at birth) and how the baby adjusts its sensory perception despite this vision loss, and how its brain readjusts when the baby is given sight (vision is restored) through a cataract operation.
“When we at the L V Prasad Eye Institute heard about her work during a scientific conference, we invited her to come to our Institute and collaborate with us, thus expanding her research on this topic with us and this was initiated in late 2013 when she visited us. Since then, our collaborative research, involving our pediatric ophthalmologist, Dr. Ramesh Kekunnaya and basic researcher Professor D. Balasubramanian, as also Dr. Lea Pey, and Dr Davide Bottari and others from her side, has yielded exciting and remarkable results that make us understand how the brain of a born cataract-blind child ‘rewires’ itself when its vision is restored”, Dr D Balasubramanian,Distinguished Scientist and Director Emeritus, Prof Brien Holden Eye Research Centre, L V Prasad Eye Institute.
The Rotary Club of Hyderabad had also set up a corpus fund for L V Prasad Eye Institute in 1997-98, and instituted an award for an outstanding ophthalmologist. This lecture is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Hyderabad every year in memory of late Dr Rustam D Ranji.
The Dr Rustam D Ranji Rotary Award and Lecture 2016 was held on 19th August by Prof Atul Kumar, Chief and Professor of Ophthalmology, Vitreous-Retina Service, Dr RP Centre, AIIMS, on the topic – “Diabetic Eye Disease – Unite to Treat”.
The late Dr Rustam D Ranji, one of Hyderabad’s leading practitioners, was an Honorary Ophthalmologist to the former Nizam, and was associated with several charitable institutions, particularly the Institute for the Blind. He was a chartered member and former president of the Rotary Club of Hyderabad and this annual award is in order to perpetuate his memory.
