Long Term Fellowships review @ Ahalia Foundation Eye Hospital, Palakkad, Kerala

Phaco and Glaucoma

Ahalia offers a 12-month phaco and an 18-month glaucoma fellowship. 

Both programs give you phaco training (about 50-60 cases minimum) during your last 4 months here. 

If you're a glaucoma fellow, you also get around 5 trab cases in addition to the cataract cases.

All fellows share the same OP workup, so you get to see cases across all specialties.

There is a mandatory one year pre-fellowship duty to be done at one of Ahalia's centers first. During this time, you're an op doctor and get zero surgeries. 

Salary during pre-fellowship is 80,000/ month and then 30,000/ month during fellowship (as of 2025).

The main fellowship training happens in Palakkad which is a small town- but the Ahalia campus is huge and vast. Palakkad is not a very happening place but thankfully Coimbatore (cool city with great hangouts) is just 1 hour drive away. 

You start with SICS for first 6-7 months and then shift to phaco but if you pick up well, you can start even earlier. You learn to operate on all kinds of cataract.  

OT runs daily from 9 am till about 3 pm and usually never goes past 5. 

Fellows are also taught to manage complications, do vitrectomies etc. 

All cases are recorded and then reviewed later by trainers to determine areas for improvement. Academics and classes don't happen much so it's up to you to read textbooks and other relevant materials.

After fellowship, there's a 1.5 year bond with a salary of 1.2 lakhs annually.

Breaking the bond will cost you 10 lakhs. You can work as a consultant at any Ahalia center for your bond period, they have a branch in most districts of Kerala.

Medical Retina

As a fellowship program was just started only in 2025- duration is for 3 months.

So after finishing your Phaco/Glaucoma fellowship, you can opt to stay an additional 3 months and do Medical Retina. During this time you continue to do more phacos (some fellows have even transitioned to topical phaco in this period) in addition to learning lasers and intravit injections as well.