The Hindu : National : AIIMS still grappling with cornea shortage

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Sunday, May 27, 2007
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AIIMS still grappling with cornea shortage

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

2,500 patients are on the list annually

NEW DELHI: India's premier medical institute, the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, is still grappling with an acute shortage of corneas.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences at AIIMS currently has a waiting list of 250 to 300 top priority patients this month who are blind in both eyes and are young.

"These are our top priority patients, and with 2,500 such people on the list annually the supply of 1,000 corneas a year — generated from within the organisation — does not allow us to do justice to the waiting list of patients that we have," says Professor of Ophthalmology Jeewan S. Titiyal."We have to understand that these are young patients who are blind in both eyes and a transplant is the only way we can help them. Most of these people have to wait for six months to a year for a donor and that is a long time," said Dr. Titiyal.

Cornea is the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris, pupil, and anterior chamber and provides most of an eye's optical power. Together with the lens, the cornea refracts light, and as a result helps the eye to focus. The country witnesses about 20,000 eye donations a year but is nowhere close to the demand, says Dr. Titiyal.

"In fact, the backlog of patients is so high that we had to take off patients who are not on the top priority list. Even now we follow a 10:1 ratio where if we do operation for 10 top priority patients we take on one from the second list. Religious beliefs and the absence of any laws to ensure that people do donate their eyes have led to the acute shortage," the doctor said. While 20,000 eyes have been pledged with the Centre over the past decade, only 10 of them have been collected so far. The Centre is now looking at working with various non-government and religious groups that will enable eye centres to collect more eyes and use them for people who are in need.

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