HONOURED: Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss greeting Dr. Vivekanada Raj after giving him the Lifetime Achievement Award for his service in rural areas in the field of Ophthalmology at the 54th annual conference of the Tamil Nadu Ophthalmic Asso ciation meeting in JIPMER on Saturday.

PONDICHERRY: The Centre is in the process of modifying the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, to bridge the huge gap in the requirement and availability of human organs for transplantation, according to Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss.

Maintaining the present ethical guidelines, the Act would be modified to simplify the procedures involved in transplantation, he said at the 54th annual conference of Tamil Nadu Ophthalmic Association at JIPMER here on Saturday. "The Act would be self-regulatory".

He said special emphasis would be given in the Act to expand the scope of eye donation, which at present was not satisfactory. The country needs around 1 lakh eyes for transplantation but every year only 25,000 eyes were available.

More eye banks, including facility to store cadaver eyes, would be opened in all parts of the country. One such bank had already been opened in Delhi.

Vision 20-20 plan

The Minister said the country was well ahead of the target in controlling blindness as per the WHO's Vision 20-20 programme. The measures undertaken after the National Programme for Control of Blindness launched in 1976 had yielded "good results" and the prevalence rate had come down to around 1 per cent from 1.46.

By the end of next year, the prevalence rate would be brought down to 0.8 per cent.

Dr. Anbumani said the country had attained great strides in treating cataract and last year alone 49.8 lakh cataract surgeries were performed. The target in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry region was to perform four and a half lakh surgeries. But it exceeded the target and performed five lakh surgeries. At the conference, V. Velayutham was appointed the next president of the Tamil Nadu Ophthalmic Association.

Later, the Minister inaugurated medical equipment at the JIPMER. The new facilities, installed at a cost of Rs. 15 crore, are a multi-slice spiral C.T Scanner, MRI unit and cardiac catherisation lab. He also launched JIPMER's four-year B.Sc. nursing course.In his address, he said the Government intended to start a Nursing Centre of Excellence in all metros in two years. The work for the 360-bed super specialty block would start soon. The project would cost Rs. 93 crore. Lieutenant Governor Mukut Mithi and Pondicherry Chief Minister N. Rangasamy were present.

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