Tamil Nadu Timeline

HealthMGR era

Sankara Nethralaya eye hospital founded in Madras

· Chennai

Sankara Nethralaya eye hospital founded in Madras
TNSE Thiyagu Ganesh PDK, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Led by S. S. Badrinath, a group in Madras founded Sankara Nethralaya, a charitable eye hospital run on a not-for-profit basis.

Jayendra Saraswathi, Sankaracharya of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, told a gathering of doctors in 1976 that a hospital was needed. Philanthropists, led by the eye surgeon Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath, then established a not-for-profit charitable eye hospital, which opened on 6 September 1978. They called it Sankara Nethralaya, meaning 'The Temple of the Eye'. Over the years it added several centres in Chennai and branches in other Indian cities.

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