Hearing and speech loss is no impediment

23.12.2015, Precision and perfection. These are the two words that go to describe 61-year-old S. Poornachandran, Senior Technician-cum-Instructor at Aravind Eye Hospital here. He has trained hundreds of people, including 23 ophthalmologists and eight administrators of big eye hospitals and repaired 55, 808 medical instruments over a quarter century. His trainees speak Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, English, French, Spanish and Swahili. But Mr. Poornachandran does not speak any language as he was not born with the ability to speak and hear.

With an eighth standard qualification while getting general and technical education in a special school for the hearing impaired and a certificate from an Industrial Training Institute in Hyderabad, he has been working as a fitter or welder in small units across the country from 1975 to 1987, when his father, Sundaram, brought him to Aravind Eye Hospital.

After getting trained under V. Srinivasan, former professor of American College in ‘Room 240’ of the hospital, Mr. Poornachandran now handles the maintenance of about 900 machines with just nine employees.

An expert trainer in maintenance of medical instruments, Mr. Poornachandran explains through gestures that eye-hand-brain coordination helps him in setting right any equipment. “We cannot wait for engineers from far off places to come to Madurai to repair an imported machine. We believe that common sense technology is enough to take care of the problems. Mr. Poornachandran possesses this in abundance,” says N. Venkatesh Prajna, Director, Academics, Aravind Eye Care System.

Mr. Poornachandran, who looks at his disability as a challenge, has travelled all over the world, especially African countries, to train people in maintenance of bio-medical instruments. He employs a unique methodology by encouraging participants to observe what he does. He is able to ‘feel’ the noise emanating from a machine by touch. “The touch transmits the status of the machine to my brain, which comes up with a solution,” explains Mr. Poornachandran through sign language.

His activities extend beyond ‘Room 240.’ He is a consultant for exhibitions organised for and by hearing impaired persons all over the country.

Last week, he was in Coimbatore to organise an exhibition at the 4th Deaf Expo 2015.

On December 3, he received the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities for outstanding performance as role model among persons with disabilities in the category of hearing impairment.

He was given the Best Employee Award of Tamil Nadu Government in 2013. He plays chess and has won prizes in tournaments. Mr. Poornachandran’s wife also has hearing and speech disability. But he always wears a smile that does even hint at his disability.