ANANTAPUR : Disability has never been a hindrance to C Vijayabhaskar Reddy in taking up social service activities. Understanding the pain of disability, he has been striving to help differently-abled people lead a better life. In a mission mode, he has taken up cornea donation campaign and helped several visually challenged people to get eyesight. Reddy hails from Chennampalli village in Bukkaraya Samudram mandal. He has an elder brother and a younger sister. When he was 5-year-old, Reddy developed fever and later was infected with polio crippling his left leg. His family owns four acres of agriculture land.
“I know the anguish of having dysfunction of one of our organs. I can better understand the suffering of the visually challenged. Cornea donation helps them regain eyesight and it is nothing short of giving a new lease of life. Hence, I took up cornea donation campaign in a big way,” he said.“I have been motivating 10-12 people a month on an average to donate their eyes. Responding to my campaign, about 100 people have come forward to donate their eyes so far. I feel it is my first step to eliminate blindness in India,” he said.
Reddy, who is currently doing his masters in Social Work, rushes to the donor at any time if anyone comes forward to donate his eyes. For cornea harvesting, he takes a trained eye technician from LV Prasad Eye Hospital along with him to the spot. “It is not that easy to convince the kin of the deceased to donate the eyes. More so at the mortuary. We have to walk a tightrope, keeping sensibilities in mind,” he said.
After completing class X from Kodigenahalli, he studied Intermediate with scholarship from Rayalaseema Development Trust (RDT). Being a merit student, he got `10,000 government scholarship. In 2016, he completed BCom Computer Applications from Anantapur Arts College and later did MCom. He also did part-time jobs in coaching centres to meet his expenses. As part of his service activities, he worked as a volunteer in Nehru Yuva Kendra.
Besides eye donation campaign, he is actively involved in serving food to street children, beggars and shelterless people staying near railway stations, bus stands and hospitals. He collects the leftover food from marriages and other functions with the help of his friends and serve it to the hungry. He also motivates youth to use the money they spend on birthday celebrations and parties to serve food to needy people as a social responsibility.