If you ever plan on spending a morning with Dr. V.K. Raju, you’d better be prepared for a case of blurred vision.
That’s because the ophthalmologist is constantly in motion, as he bustles from one exam room to next, consulting and conferring with the patients who come to see him – because they aren’t seeing as well as they should.
Cataracts.
Glaucoma.
Diabetic retinopathy.
The decline in visual acuity that simply occurs as we age.
That workload was built on the reputation of care he quickly established after his arrival in Morgantown 47 years ago.
Now, he’s oftentimes treating the grown children and grandchildren of those first patients from those early days.
“You’re doing well, my friend,” he says to one, in the lilting accent of his Indian homeland.
“Excellent, excellent. Everything is as it should be.”
Five days from now, when you’re still talking about the WVU bowl game while getting the rec room ready for your New Year’s Eve party, Raju will be doing what he does.
At an age (he’ll just blink and smile, if you ask the number) when one might start thinking about the rocking chair, Raju, instead, will be buckled into an airplane seat, jetting to rural India.
There, he’ll log the next several weeks in his home country, performing procedures free of charge – some complex and some not – across locales where prescription lenses can be considered high luxury.
After that, it’s a trip to Guatemala, where he’ll see patients in April.
The work is sanctioned by the Eye Foundation of America, a Doctors Without Borders-type enterprise for ophthalmologists he established a year after got here.
Total it all up, and the numbers are, well, eye-popping.
By 2013, for example, he estimated that he and his colleagues at the two eye hospitals he founded in India had performed some 1.7 million procedures, which either saved eyesight or restored eyesight across the sprawling country.
That’s roughly the population of West Virginia – and it was 10 years ago.
Again, all on his own dime and his own time.
“I don’t like the word, ‘charity,’” he said last week, as he looked back on that work – while looking ahead to all the work he’s set to take on in 2024.
“I see it more of an opportunity, and of having the resources, to provide care to people who need it the most. This is something I’m obligated to do.”
Country Roads, a vision
He got that focus very early back in Rajahmundry. Raju was born and raised in the city known for its culture and commerce in India’s southeastern Andhra Pradesh region.
His father died when he was a little boy, leaving his mother to soldier on as a widow and single parent, on top of her daily grapple with diabetes and the resulting kidney disease caused by it.
Diabetes didn’t derail her spirit, her son remembered. Raju credits her with his work ethic and world view.
After medical school in India and residencies in England, where he staffed emergency rooms and did internal medicine besides his work in ophthalmology, he was recruited to WVU in 1976 because of his expertise in corneal transplants.
“They weren’t done here then,” he said.
He wasn’t sure then if the Mountain State was going to be a stepping stone for other medical appointments.
The University of Chicago came courting, and another ophthalmologist friend begged him to join his lucrative private practice in California.
In the end, the pioneering practitioner chose to stay in West Virginia.
“I’m happy the Lord kept me here.”
Of accolades, the continuum of care (and one amazing workday)
This past August, the American Academy of Ophthalmology presented Raju with its Life Achievement Honor Award.
The recognition reflects, in part, on that resume of charity care – even if the recipient doesn’t prefer the term – performed by Raju from Appalachia to Afghanistan.
Globally, according to numbers culled by the World Health Organization at least 2.2 billion people are suffering from vision issues in some variant, be it myopia (near-sightedness and short-sightedness) to total blindness.
In more than half of those cases, the WHO says, such vision impairment could have been prevented. Or, at least, it has yet to be addressed.
Perhaps the biggest scourge of the above is diabetes, which hits home for Raju, given his mother’s medical history.
The American Diabetes Association reports that more than 200,000 West Virginians – or, 15% of the adult population – have diagnosed diabetes.
Another 500,000 – or nearly 35% of the state’s adult population – are pre-diabetic, the association says.
In Raju’s world, diabetes means the earlier-mentioned diabetic retinopathy, a byproduct of the disease, which chokes off blood vessels to the eye, resulting in legal blindness or blindness altogether.
That’s why he always tries, he said, to get his patients to open their eyes to the benefits of healthy lifestyles, from the dinner table to walking regimens.
It’s never too late to get started, he said.
As an ophthalmologist, once Raju gets started – he doesn’t stop.
Just ask his friend and colleague, Dr. Peter McDonnell.
McDonnell, who is also an internationally known ophthalmologist, directs the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
Once, while accompanying Raju on a medical sojourn to Rajahmundry, McDonnell had to literally rub his eyes, to make sure he was seeing what he was seeing.
His friend from Morgantown was a veritable, vision-saving machine.
“Seventy-five cataract operations in one day by one doctor,” a fellow ophthalmologist marveled.
“And no waiting.”