Eye Health Hero: Asitkumar S. Jadhav

With the clear intention of doing good for the society and delivering primary eye care services, Asitkumar dedicated his entire career towards the eye health sector. After completing his Bachelors in Optometry from Lotus College of Optometry, Mumbai, he worked for 10+ years in the field of optometry. His humble beginnings are working as a clinical optometrist in an eye clinic in Mumbai, serving patients from urban and rural settings. Over the years, he gained in-depth knowledge on screening, prescription of spectacles, dispensing spectacles, contact lenses and counselling patients.

“I love my job since I see it as an opportunity to serve the community at large. I am proud to be part of an energetic group that enables and allows me to learn and implement programmes in a sustainable manner. It is quite endearing to work with Vision Centre staff who provide high quality eye health services to socio-economically challenged communities in remote locations of India. I am also incredibly glad to be a part of an organisation such as Mission for Vision that endeavours to eradicate avoidable blindness by enabling eye health services to communities in need.”

-Asitkumar S. Jadhav

He played key roles in leading eye-care organisations such as Gangar Opticians and Diagnos Healthcare India. After gaining a breadth of experience in the private sector, he moved to the public eye-health domain in the year 2017 with Mission for Vision (MFV) as a Senior Optometrist. At MFV, he has been engaged in multiple projects focused towards strengthening eye health systems for marginalised communities in semi-urban and rural areas of India. His notable contributions are towards the establishment of the Vision Centres by MFV under the Mission Jyot programme. He is presently involved in the monitoring of 17 Vision Centres spread across rural and remote regions of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Asitkumar has also been sharing his wealth of knowledge by way of training and trained over 20 Optometrists and 50 Community Health Workers who form the backbone of all our interventions in delivering primary eye care services to the most distant and secluded parts of India.

Aside of monitoring and training activities, Asitkumar plays a significant role in boosting the performance of the Vision Centres, so that more communities can avail the benefits of this primary eye care centre. Whenever he is in the field, he does not hesitate to interact with the community members and has also provided counselling and optometry advice, purely out of passion and his genuine efforts to help the community.

He also played a key role in interventions towards improving eye health for truckers and school children. He has co-authored an article on “Importance of colour vision testing in school-based eye health examination” published in the Community Eye Health Journal and presented a report on trucker eye health at the Vision 2020 – India’s 15th annual conference.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, he supported MFV’s senior team in developing the adaptation guidelines that help eye health personnel to deliver eye care services and simultaneously minimise the risk of Coronavirus transmission to our patients and staff.

A much-respected member of the MFV team, his colleagues appreciate his commitment to the sector and his positive attitude. They also appreciate his efforts in keeping partners, stakeholders and team members updated with latest guidelines, technologies and standard operating protocols.