One of the crucial health problems in India is that of blindness, and that too a preventive one. Yet, eye donation figures are awfully dismal in India.
In 2006, only 29,000 eyes were donated across the country. These figures are gloomy given that more than 1.1 million people in India suffering from corneal blindness are still waiting for their turn to get their vision back.
Out of the corneas collected, only 50 per cent can be utilised for sight restoration while the others are too poor to be transplanted, said G Ganesh, executive director of the Eye Bank Association of India (EBAI), Hyderabad.
There are about 500 eye banks registered under the EBAI. “Every year, there are 20-25,000 fresh cases of corneal blindness. However, the concept of eye donation is yet to take off in our country,” said Ganesh.
This is surprising, given that the concept of eye banks is as old as 60 years. “Awareness has started growing only in the past two decades,” he said. The increase in donations is a meager four to five per cent annually.
Coordination between eye banks has always been a big issue. Of late, the Ministry of Health has approved a three-tier eye banking system. This will include five eye bank training centres, 45 eye banks and 2,000 eye donation centres across the country.
“The proposal is interesting and we have asked the EBAI to work on it,” said R Jose, deputy director general ophthalmology, Ministry of Health.
Unfortunately, religious beliefs and superstitions still remain the biggest obstacles in tackling the problem.
“Gujaratis and Marwaris remain the biggest donors as far as eye donation is concerned. The rest find it difficult if religious texts forbid them from doing so,” said RM Kumbhar, assistant director, health department of Maharashtra.
The lack of trained personnel and infrastructure in eye banks make the whole purpose of eye banks redundant. The mushrooming of non-functional and unregistered eye banks have also made coordination and availability difficult.
