As National Eye Donation Fortnight kicks off in Keralam, a shortage of donor corneas — particularly good-quality tissue from younger donors — continues to be a major impediment to the State’s fight against corneal blindness, ophthalmologists say.
This would help ensure that there is no shortage of donor corneas while improving the chances of retrieving good-quality tissue, ophthalmologists point out. “People should be made aware that anyone can donate eyes, regardless of conditions such as diabetes, hypertension or cataract, and that the eye (cornea) is the only organ that can be donated even after death, ideally within a six-hour window. There is no disfigurement. Haridas, Assistant Surgeon and cornea and cataract specialist at the General Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram. This is where HCRP comes in. It is a proactive, hospital-based model that promotes eye donation after the death of a patient in hospital.
A team from the eye bank goes directly to the deceased person’s home, retrieves just the cornea (not the entire eye), and the process hardly takes 15 minutes,” says Reshmi P. In 2023, Government Medical College, Kozhikode, retrieved 56 corneas, of which just 14 could be transplanted, a utilisation rate of 25%. In the same year, Little Flower Hospital, Angamaly, which has a well-established HCRP and an eye bank, retrieved 1,624 corneas, of which 645 (48%) were transplanted.
At a time when the State has been expanding facilities for corneal transplantation in public health institutions — the General Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, became the first district-level government hospital in the country to perform a corneal transplant (keratoplasty) earlier this year — the focus should be on developing robust Hospital Cornea Retrieval Programmes (HCRP) in both the public and private sectors.
