this weekend to speak at the Lions Club's first ever Sight First conference.

World-famous ophthalmologist Dr. Murugappa Chennaveerappa Modi, known by Indians as "our brother who gives eyesight'', has conducted more than 800 free eye operations a day (most for cataracts and squints), with a 99.5 percent success rate.

This remarkable achievement has earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having conducted the most eye operations. He has also been featured on television shows and in publications the world over, including Newsweek and Medical World News.

Dr. Modi manages to operate on so many people by performing what he calls "assembly-line surgery'', with up to six patients being attended to at one time.

And instead of patients going to doctors and hospitals for treatment, he goes to them with his Touring Eye Hospital, which he compared to the Ringling Brothers Circus in America.

He goes into poor villages and sets up camp, staying until everyone in need of treatment is seen to, cured and released.

Dr. Modi and his free Touring Eye Hospital have also travelled to Russia, Africa, America and Sri Lanka.

On returning to Bombay after finishing his post-graduate work in optometry at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, he could have chosen an affluent career attending to the wealthy.

But, in his 30s as a med-student, he began dreaming of one day helping the needy. He was educated in India and at Columbia University in New York.

"In India people would beg for help,'' he said.

"They said they couldn't afford to go to the hospitals. In my country, around two million people are totally blind, and six million are partially blind.'' Dr. Modi said if he did not run his free touring hospital, most of those people would die blind. In 1942, the disciple and friend of Mahatma Gandhi started his travelling eye hospital.

His free eye operation camps are funded in part by the Indian government, but a good portion of funding comes from the Red Cross, YMCA, churches, Lions and Rotary Clubs.

The Lions Clubs of Bermuda are part of Lions Clubs International's effort to raise funds to be distributed to poor and developing countries for eye operations and setting up eye hospitals.

Dr. M.C. Modi GIVING BACK SIGHT -- Dozens of patients of Dr. M.C. Modi gather outside his Touring Eye Hospital van.