“When I chose medicine and particularly ophthalmology as a career I wanted to ensure that a significant portion of my career would be spent in humanitarian work,” said Dr Jayant during a chat after a long day at the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC), where he is an associate consultant.
While training to be an ophthalmologist, he visited Myanmar, India, China, the Philippines and Sri Lanka and got to meet people who had dedicated much of their lives towards helping others. “These travels and the people I met inspired me to set up The Vision Mission (TVM) in early 2014,” said Dr Jayant about his initiative which is a Singapore-based non-profit organisation. He added that while it was good to go on regular mission trips abroad and contribute towards the efforts of sight restoration for a few people in underprivileged backgrounds every now and then, he felt
that this was not good enough.
“I needed to set up a long-term, sustainable model of eye care that could be replicated in various parts of Asia where access to eye care is limited.”
Aimed to provide free eye care, so he discussed this idea with his colleague Dr Jason Lee – an associate consultant with The Eye Institute at Tan Tock Seng Hospital – and his Raffles Junior College batch-mate and close friend Avinash Jayaraman, an entrepreneur. “Together we decided to set up The Vision Mission with the primary aim of providing free eye care for those in need by creating locally-run sustainable eye care programmes and vision clinics augmented by expertise from fellow Singaporean and regional eye care experts.”
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