Bos Bihar

The Bihar Ophthalmological Society was conceived in April 1944, with the aim “To cultivate and promote Ophthalmic and allied medical sciences including improvement of public health and medical education in Bihar from the ophthalmic point of view”. The society came into existence in the campus of Eye department of PMCH with a handful of members, Dr.Dukhan Ram being appointed as President. Dr. Paras Nath Sinha took the arduous duty of being its Secretary. Since then, for a numbers of years, in October/ November every year, annual general meeting were held in the Prince of Wales Medical Collage, Patna. A guest speaker used to grace the occasion and deliver a scientific lecture.

After being in existence for good sixteen years-the first Bihar Ophthalmological Conference was organized by the society in Patna on 28th and 29th October, 1961 due to the hard labour put in by Dr. J N Rohatgi, the then Secretary and late Dr S Nazre Imam, the then joint secretary of the society. Late Dr P N Sinha, the then President of the society presided over the conference. Since then every year we have been holding an annual conference. Such conferences have great utility value. Besides providing social contact, they are of great educative value to youngsters in the speciality as well as to ophthalmic medical practitioners. A souvenir is published to mark each conference. In these conferences, we have also started an extra mural lecture, the first lecture being Dr R P Dhanda in 1965 spoke on Corneal grafting at Darbhanga on the occasion of the 4th Annual conference. Since then, we are continuing the practice.

To keep the members abreast of increasing scientific knowledge a memorial lecture Dr Bhagwan Prasad memorial lecture series was started in 1972, in which we had speakers like Dr A S H Rahi from London and Dr P K Basu from Toronto unfortunately due to discontinuation of financial grant from family members of late Dr. B P Singh, we could not continue the series beyond 1976.

Achievements: As early as 1960, the society could help in drafting the Bihar Cornea Bill, which was passed by the Bihar Legislature to facilitate corneal grafting operations in the state. The society has always been insisting on the State Government of Bihar from its various conferences to fulfill a long awaited need of the state, i.e. to have a full-fledged institute of Ophthalmology at Patna. Besides diagnosis and treatment, such an institute could form a nucleus for ophthalmic research and advanced teaching for medical and Para-medical staff. Our efforts have succeeded and with assistance under the National Programme for Control of Blindness, a Regional Institute of Ophthalmology has been established at Patna Medical College.

The Regional Institute of Ophthalmology has of late (16-08-1995 was shifted to Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), Sheikhpura, Patna. With some ups and downs the same Regional Institute has come of age and taken on the responsibility both for research and in clinical practice along with training of suitable personnel for the same. Besides this, the Eye Department of Nalanda Medical College and Eye Department of Darbhanga Medical College have also been upgraded.

The society has been able to publish its journal, Bihar Journal of Ophthalmology since 1973, wherein we have scientific papers as also reports of our activities. The credit for this goes to our respected and dynamic colleague Dr Ajit Sinha. Before this journal was published, our scientific activities and papers were published in the Patna Journal of Medicine in its ophthalmic numbers.