 A vast number of carnally blind people (3.8 million) need corneas for the restoration of their vision, but the procurement of corneas in the whole of the country is only 16,000 per annum while the number of transplants carried out is only about 7,000 per annum. Apart from the pressing need to collect at least 1,00,000 corneas per annum, there is an urgent need to upgrade the qualitative standards of Eye Banking in India. In the last decade, there has been reasonably good progress in this regard and there are Eye banks operating in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore & Vadodara where the requisite facilities for procuring, evaluating, testing, processing & storing the corneas have been established. Many of the Eye banks in reality are only eye collection centers and more than 60% of them collect less than 50 eyes per annum. Apart from the necessary legislative support aimed at augmenting the supply of corneas, it is necessary to initiate Cornea Retrieval Program in smaller cities for increasing the number of corneas substantially.
The technique of removing only the corneas for the purpose of transplants is yet to be established replacing the current general practice of removing the whole eyeballs from the deceased person. There is also a need to establish the necessary training course for the Eye Bank technicians.
Keeping all this in mind, there definitely is a high demand to start a full fledged Eye Bank with the latest of the Equipments with a good public awareness program & the proper training course for the technician.
This proposed Eye Bank project will be Non-profit venture by Rotary Club of Bhusawal, working for a noble and admirable cause helping the visually impaired patients. The aim of the project would be to run a proper fully fledged, fully equipped with latest equipments required for Eyeball removal from the dead body (Enucleator), Processing and Evaluating the tissue & then storing it in proper storage mediums to be used for Corneal Transplantation either immediately or at a later date for optical, therapeutic or research purpose. |
