POLLACHI: She hears a noise on her left and moves her head painfully to see what has caused it. Fifty-two-year-old Saradha has completely lost vision in her left eye and her right eye too has progressive cataract. Concerned over its ordeal, visitors are told to come on its right side.

Two ophthalmologists from the Aravind Eye Hospital, Coimbatore (AEHC) are to conduct cataract surgery on her on April 9.

The difference, though, is that Saradha is an elephant.

AEHC Chief Medical Officer V. Narendran and his wife Kalpana Narendran screened Saradha at Kozhikamuthi in the Anamalais, 44 km from here, on Saturday and say the procedure to be followed is similar to the one for humans.

Post-operative care

"We are going to take out just the lens. And we will suture the wound. Post-operative care will be followed by antibiotics and steroids," Dr. Narendran said.

"Whenever we visited the Forest Department officials showed us the elephant. The cataract has slowly been progressing and has reached a stage where it is almost hyper-matured," the doctors said. They are going to source some big-sized surgical equipment based on the eye structure and size of the eyeball.

Forest Department Veterinarian N.S. Manoharan said they thought of surgerywhen Chief Wildlife Warden C.K.Sridharan visited the elephant rejuvenation camp. The loss of vision has changed the pachyderm's behaviour and surgical intervention is the only option. Though the surgery is similar to that performed on human beings, the challenging part will be the care before and after surgery.

Wildlife Warden of Indira Gandhi Wildlife Sanctuary, K.R. Varadharajan, said that if the procedure was successful it would not only help the animal but also be a boon for elephant management in the country. "There are around 3,500 captive elephants in India and the surgery will definitely an eye-opener for all," he said.

Elevated platform

The surgery will be performed in the jungles from an elevated platform. "Since we are not of aware of any precedence, we are taking extra care. There is an element of risk involved in administering anaesthesia to make the elephant lies down since we are not sure that which side it will fall. If it falls on left side the entire effort will go waste. So we will be administering anaesthesia in such a way as to keep her standing," Dr. Manoharan said.

Senior Research Fellow of Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, Poornima Ravishankar, who camps in Top Slip, says Saradha has nothing to lose and the initiative will throw light on several issues relating to animal care.

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