India eye doctor: A nationwide AIIMS–Delhi survey has found India has just one ophthalmologist for every 65,221 people on average, far short of targets set to eliminate avoidable blindness.
The study, led by Praveen Vashist at the Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences and published in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, mapped human resources and infrastructure across 7,901 secondary and tertiary eye-care facilities and concluded that access is both inadequate and highly uneven.
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Researchers counted 20,944 ophthalmologists and 17,849 optometrists working nationwide, below Vision 2020 benchmarks that called for 25,000 ophthalmologists and 48,000 hospital-based paramedics. On average, India has one eye institute per 1,64,536 people and an ophthalmologist density of 15 per million, ranging from 127 per million in Puducherry to just 2 per million in Ladakh. Southern and western states fare better; severe shortages persist in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
The survey also highlights the private sector’s dominant role: 70.6% of eye facilities are privately run, compared with 15.6% public and 13.8% NGO. Private centres are more likely to offer 24×7 eye emergencies, refractive surgery and low-vision services, while eye banking, with tissue processing and storage, exists in only 5.7% of institutes and remains patchy. Overall, 87% of institutes reported functional eye operation theatres, 40.5% had round-the-clock emergency care and India had 74 eye beds per million population.
Skill mix is another concern. The optometrist-to-ophthalmologist ratio stands at 0.85, fewer than one optometrist per surgeon, masking stark variation from 8.33 in Andaman & Nicobar Islands to 0.45 in Delhi. International comparisons underscore India’s gap: ophthalmologist density averages 3.7 per million in low-income countries and 76.2 in high-income nations, with figures of 56.8 in the United States and 183 in Greece.
The authors urge stronger workforce tracking through India’s Health Management Information System, targeted investment to expand eye banks, low-vision services and emergency care, and coordinated action by the Union Health Ministry and partners to correct regional shortfalls. With only 20,944 ophthalmologists identified against the 25,000 needed, the study warns that universal eye-care coverage will require sustained funding, policy commitment and rapid, need-based scaling of both infrastructure and trained personnel.