“Give life to a dead eye”. COVID-19 hits Eye Donations very hard in India
The “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2” (SARS-Cov-2) has done more damage in every sphere of life than one had imagined. The COVID-19 has hit very hard the Indian Eye Donations.
Nearly 30,000 people used to donate corneal tissue every year and the number of Corneal Tissue stood at 60,000 last year.
Shockingly the number has come down now to just 10%, ie. about 6000 corneal tissues informs Dr. Santosh Kumar Kraleti, All India Joint Secretary of SAKSHAM and Country Director of CAMBA. SAKSHAM is a charitable national organization with a major presence in Hyderabad. CAMBA is a project of SAKSHAM.
It has recently organised a Nationwide movement, “National Eye Donation Pledge Contest” which achieved a record number of 3.08 lakh Eye Pledges from across India in just 14 days. Both Telugu states put together mobilised 34000 plus Corneas Pledged during this competition. Lucknow District stood first in India in mobilising 35, 717 Eye Pledges, Jabalpur District stood second with 30,641 Eyes Pledged. The campaign covered 678 Districts out of 739 districts in the country. 49 districts pledge 1000 and above and 7 districts pledged 10,000 eyes and more.
“Cornea Andhatv Mukt Bharat Abhiyan (CAMBA)” is a pan India movement of Saksham to bring down the incidence of Corneal Blindness in India and to motivate millions of Indians to pledge their eyes for this noble cause. And we hope that this initiative will spark and motivate more people to
come forward and donate corneas tissues.
We need two lakh corneas every year on an assumption that 50% of them are not fit for transplantation. We have more than 400 Eye Banks in India. Still, we collect 60,000 corneas annually and 50% of them are not fit for corneal transplantation. Eye Banks have to be more efficient. Sri Lanka exports Corneas to 27 countries. Their PM and their Buddhist religious gurus promote eye donation. In 2018, Sri Lanka has exported 48,000 corneas to 27 countries. One in five Sri Lankans have pledged to donate their corneas, says Dr. Prashanth Garg from LV Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad.
Though India has more than 600 Eye Banks, the eye donations(Corneal Tissues) is very very low. The USA has just 57 eye banks. In 2018. U.S. eye banks reported 133,576 total tissue recoveries from 68,102 donors in 2018. Their eye banks are far more effective than ours.
We have 12 lakh corneal blind in our country with 25,000-30,000 new cases being added every year. The burden of corneal blindness in our country is 0.12 per cent. But, with eye donations falling drastically due to COVID the gap is further widened and the disease burden is on the rise says Dr. Santosh Kumar. Fewer donations have led to a serious shortage of the corneal tissue needed for transplants to restore vision in people suffering from the loss of eyesight due to irreparable damage of the tissue, he adds.
The only answer to this is replacing the impaired cornea in the patients. We need Two lakh corneas every year, but, only around 60,000 corneas are available due to lack of motivation and awareness says Dr. Santosh.
Nearly 80 lakh people die every year which means 1.6 crore corneas are buried and burnt. If the corneas of all the dead are donated, the blindness can be removed from India completely within no time. And it is possible. But, we need a massive awareness says Dr. Santosh Kumar, who is also the founder-director of Dhatri Mother’s Milk Bank, India’s largest mother’s breast milk bank located at Niloufer.
We need to revive the eye donation movement which took a major hit because of the outbreak of the pandemic. This has resulted in a rise in the burden and also the waiting list is on the rise.
Eye donation provides the gift of sight to those in need of a transplant. Hence, I urge people to come forward and donate the eyes of their deceased family member. Corneal donation is important because it can restore vision and reduce pain for those in need of a transplant. Over 95% of all corneal transplants restore the recipient’s vision. Unlike blood donation, most people are potential to donate corneas. The age, eye colour and eyesight do not stop you from the donation. Further, a donor’s blood need not match to the recipient’s blood type. This means everybody can be an eye donor.