The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Full-fledged eye bank network needed to meet demand

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 13, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Full-fledged eye bank network needed to meet demand

By Dennis Marcus Mathew

HYDERABAD, SEPT. 12. The absence of a well-knit eye banking and corneal transplantation network in the country, coupled with a myopic approach by the Government, is threatening to affect an estimated one lakh people requiring corneal transplants every year in India, a number that is constantly on the rise.

The Government's attitude is perhaps evident from the fact that a proposal to address the lack of awareness and necessary infrastructure in this field and establish an eye banking system, which was submitted to the State Government by experts here two years ago and later forwarded to the Centre, still remains on paper.

Lack of equipment

The lack of a full-fledged eye-banking network to harvest corneas, ophthalmologists say, is hampering the collection of the requisite two lakh corneas for one lakh patients. The number of corneas has to be doubled since nearly 50 per cent of those collected are usually unsuitable.

Worsening the problem is the fact that a few of the country's 200 eye banks are banks in the true sense of the word -- surveys conducted by various agencies have revealed that most of the banks lack necessary equipment and trained personnel.

However, Gullapalli N. Rao, Chair of Eye Health at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute here, says there is no dearth of resources to create a world-class eye banking and corneal transplantation network in India. "What seems to be missing is a proactive national movement to translate concepts and plans into time-bound action," he says.

The concept

The proposal submitted to the Government, according to Dr. Rao, moots a community eye-banking concept. Each bank in the network, with adequate infrastructure and trained manpower, can process 4,000 corneas per year, which translates to 50 eye banks for the entire country.

"These eye banks should be autonomous and handle public awareness, tissue harvesting, tissue evaluation (including serology and microbiology), tissue preservation and tissue distribution. This will ensure that all patients, without any discrimination, have equal access to eyes on a first-come first-served basis," he points out.

Training

Each eye bank is to be linked to 40 Eye Donation Centres (EDC), which are involved only in harvesting corneas. To meet the demand for training of eye banking personnel, five of the eye banks can be identified as training centres. In addition, each eye bank can develop a Hospital Cornea Retrieval Programme (HCRP) in 10 major hospitals. Half (2000) the harvesting is achieved by the eye bank through HCRP and the other half (2000), through contribution of eye donation centres, with 50 eyes (25 donors) a year from each EDC.

The financial outlay for the plan includes Rs. 30-40 lakhs for an eye bank and Rs. 50,000 for an EDC.

The funds can be mobilised from the Government, international NGOs and local sources while the operating expenses of eye banks can be covered by donations and processing fee (those belonging to upper socio-economic groups pay this as part of fee and for the lower socio-economic groups a subsidy may be provided by Government and NGOs), suggests Dr. Rao.

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