Pune hospistal launches cornea retrieval plan

Every year at least three lakh corneas are required, but only 35,000 corneas are harvested in India, leaving a huge gap which cannot be bridged through voluntary eye donation alone.

To make good this shortfall and spread awareness about it, HV Desai Eye hospital in Muhammadwadi, Hadapsar, has started a ‘hospital cornea retrieval’ programme.

Dr Madan Deshpande, chief medical officer of the hospital, told DNA the programme was launched a couple of years ago.

“Corneas are collected from corpses within six hours of death. Home death involves mostly natural death in which elderly people die. In hospitals, deaths take place due to cardiac arrests or other ailments. In case of hospital deaths, if a dead patient’s corneas can be removed they can be used for someone who need them,” he said.

Corneas of young people are healthier, compared to that of elderly people. Every hospital should have a grief counsellor so that this can promote eye donation and meet the requirement of corneal transplants in India, said Deshpande.

The HV Desai Eye Hospital has tied up with city-based Inlaks & Budhrani Hospital to run the programme, where relatives of dead patients are immediately contacted and convinced for cornea donation. “We had even approached two to three other big hospitals, but they were not keen on this programme,” he said.

According to Deshpande, HV Desai Eye Hospital collects over 600 corneas per year. “As per the law, if an eye bank fails to collect 50 corneas per year they lose the status of eye bank. For this purpose every eye bank must have a grief counsellor, who can visit the relatives of a patient and convince them to donate the corneas of the deceased,” he said.

The extent of cornea collection in Pune is less than 1,000, while the figure for Maharashtra stands at more than 5,000 per year. This number needs to be improved drastically so that blindness can be eradicated, he added.