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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Separate guidelines for eye transplants -Durgesh Nandan Jha

Separate guidelines for eye transplants -Durgesh Nandan Jha

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published Published on Jun 10, 2013   modified Modified on Jun 10, 2013
-The Times of India


NEW DELHI: India will soon have separate guidelines for eye donations and transplantation. The Union health ministry, in its bid to augment eye donations in the country, has set up a committee, headed by the chief of R P Eye Centre at AIIMS, Dr R V Azad, to frame new rules which will separate eye retrieval and transplant from organ donations.

"Unlike a heart, kidney and other organs, eyes can be retrieved from a cadaver within four hours after a person has been declared dead. So the scope of retrieval and permission is much more. We will capitalize on this opportunity to ensure that more donations take place," said Dr Azad.

He said the pledge card of the deceased should be honored by the family members. "The required request for organ donation, as of now, is only for ICU deaths. We plan to make it mandatory for all hospital deaths," he added.

Experts say India has 3.5 million people with corneal blindness and every year, 30,000 new patients are added. "At least two lakh cornea donations are needed annually. We get only about 50,000 per year. Last year, we collected only 41,000 corneas," said Dr Namrata Sharma, additional professor, cornea and refractive surgery services at R P Eye Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Sources said half of the eyes donated annually go waste due to unsuitability of the donor organ or unavailability of recipients. "There is a need for more functional eye banks in the country so that more transplantable corneas are collected. We are working on a training programme for the eye bank personnel such as eye donation counsellors, who counsel the family at the time of death about eye donation and eye bank technicians who retrieve the eyeballs or corneas," said Azad.

AIIMS recently developed a solution that can preserve the corneas for up to two weeks and will cost around Rs 700 per vial. Cornea is the transparent tissue that covers the eye. It allows light to enter and performs two-thirds of the focusing tasks. For people suffering from vision loss due to irreparable damage of the tissue, transplant is the only option. An eye transplant involves replacing a diseased or scarred cornea with a donor graft.

According to Dr Jagdish Prasad, the director general of health services (DGHS), the ministry is also contemplating allowing the use of retrieved corneas for academics if it cannot be put to therapeutic use.


The Times of India, 10 June, 2013, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Separate-guidelines-for-eye-transplants/articleshow/20513130.cms


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