Sankara Nethralaya gets an influx of people from Bangladesh with fake documentation

Sankara Nethralaya faces influx of Bangladeshi patients with fake appointments, takes steps to address issue.

Sankara Nethralaya, the not-for-profit charitable eye hospital headquartered in Chennai, is facing a unique concern relating to patients from Bangladesh: a significant number of them are arriving at the hospital with fake documentation regarding appointments with doctors there, only to be disappointed.

Speaking to The Hindu, a representative of the organisation said, “To facilitate the issuance of Indian visa for patients from Bangladesh, some travel agents are regularly issuing fake letters by changing the original PDF forms of Sankara Nethralaya.”

The representative added that doctors at the hospital were seeing at least 100 patients a day from Bangladesh and the country alone accounted for 60% of all patients who are foreign nationals.

In the case of some countries from where a sizeable number of patients visit Sankara Nethralaya, such as Oman and Mauritius, the hospital has made direct arrangements with the respective countries’ Health Ministries to ensure that genuine appointments are granted and visas are facilitated accordingly. The Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare apparently does not yet offer such a service to its citizens who travel to India for medical purposes.

Nevertheless, bearing in mind the volume of patients coming from Bangladesh, Sankara Nethralaya has set up a separate email address for patients from there to directly reach out to the hospital and request appointments.

The Hindu was able to observe, on site, the case of a patient from Bangladesh who, despite having visited Sankara Nethralaya earlier and thus having a genuine registration number with the hospital, reached the hospital one month before an allotted appointment based on a visa granted using a fake letter and registration number.

As it turned out, there was, however, no appointment available to the patient on the day, as the doctor in question was on long leave. The Hindu also obtained a photograph of a fake document issued to a patient from Bangladesh.