Eye Health Hero: Neeraj Shah

Dr. Neeraj Shah joined Sankara Eye Foundation, India (SEFI) as a postgraduate student in 2011. Through his steadfast efforts for the last 10 years, he has proven himself to be a fine ophthalmologist and an able administrator. After a short stint at Sankara Eye Hospital Kanpur as a Consultant-Ophthalmologist, he was promoted to the position of Chief Medical Officer for Sankara Eye Hospital Jaipur in the year 2019.

With a continuous desire to upgrade his skills in ophthalmology, he underwent Certification in ‘Advanced Cardiac Life Support’ and also completed ‘Fellowship in Cornea & Refractive Surgery’. He was part of a team that developed a low-cost video keratoscope that was recognized with the Best Research Award by the ‘All India Ophthalmological Society’.

Leveraging the exposure to a high volume of surgeries performed, he is an expert in performing temporal manual small incision cataract surgeries & phacoemulsification. Over the past decade, he has organized various academic programs, CMEs, and mentored many PG students and fellows, many of whom have now established their independent practice.

As a CMO of Sankara Eye Hospital, Jaipur, Dr.Neeraj has been instrumental in collaborating with Sankara Quality Assurance and Learning Programme (SanQALP) towards obtaining NABH accreditation and becoming the first stand-alone Eye Hospital in the state of Rajasthan. He continues to work with the SanQALP team to ensure quality eye care to all the patients and makes sure that everyone gets delighted with our services.

2020, was a year like no other. With no SOP or playbook, there was a need to evolve with new evidence. As a COVID task force member, he helped to create and implement relevant SOPs for the safety of patients and employees across our 12 hospitals.

An eye hospital involves various cadres. Dr.Neeraj motivates the team, and also ensures periodic communication between all stakeholders. To solve the social challenges, it is imperative to collaborate and co-create with like-minded organizations. Dr.Neeraj is a member of the ‘Confederation of Indian Industry Young Indians’ (Jaipur-Chapter) who works with the Government towards COVID relief. He has also taken the role of Co-Chair for the ‘Gift an Organ’ vertical with a focus to promote organ donation.

As we look ahead to strengthen and expand our organization towards the vision of eliminating avoidable blindness, we recognize Dr.Neeraj as one of the future leaders to drive these efforts. It is our pleasure to nominate Dr.Neeraj Shah for this award.

“SEFI is among the largest community eye care with 44 Years of Excellence, which aims at providing affordable eye care to the needy to eliminate curable blindness in India. The organization has performed over 2 million free eye surgeries so far.

The best part of ‘SEFI’ is that a doctor need not worry about the ability of the patient to access quality and reliable eye care. Sankara ensures that every patient can be given the best possible treatment under any ophthalmic sub-specialty comfortably, without any compromise, irrespective of the patient’s paying capacity. I love this about Sankara.”

– Dr. Neeraj Shah