The Hindu : National : A dawn in Kashmir

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 22, 2005

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National

A dawn in Kashmir

Shujaat Bukhari

For two women, the gift of sight

SRINAGAR: For 15-year-old Sahiba and 45-year-old Aisha, Saturday was a gifted day: they could see a pleasant Kashmir spring day with their own eyes after having lost their eyesight for one or the other reason.

Thanks to two eyes donated by someone in Delhi, they regained their sight. And in the process, they also became part of Kashmir's medical history.

The Eye Care and Research Centre founded by the eye surgeon Bashir Ahmed was in focus. It was here that a team of doctors from New Delhi grafted the cornea onto the two women. Sahiba had lost her eyesight owing to a developmental defect, while Aisha lost it after suffering an injury.

"It was certainly a difficult moment as a triple procedure had be conducted in the case of Aisha, but we succeeded," said Rishi Mohan of M.M. Eyetech, Delhi, who had come to Srinagar with two eyes donated to the Sewa Eye Bank in Delhi. Under the supervision of Madan Mohan, a former director of the Rajendra Prasad Institute of Opthamology, the medical team that included Dr. Bashir and Dr. Indira Mohan made history.

"It is a great moment for me,'' Ms. Sahiba told The Hindu, adding that now she can think of resuming her studies. Ms. Aisha is enjoying the world too. Religious questions

These two surgical procedures would also seem to have put to rest questions about Islam and human organ grafting. According to Dr. Bashir, in Saudi Arabia more than 12,500 people received donated eyes between 1983 and 2003.

"We did conduct some operations here in 1973 but objections came from certain quarters,'' he said. "But a verdict has been given by the Saudi clergy that it was not un-Islamic," he added.

However, the problem of adequate number of donors remains. He attributes this to lack of awareness.

However, Dr. Mohan said the situation is no different in the rest of the country except in the southern States. He said 11 million people suffer from total blindness in India while 1.5 million have corneal blindness.

In the latter case, transplantation can help revive eyesight. "We do not get [enough] eye donations and 80 per cent of the donations in the country come from South India,'' he said.

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