DONATE EYES
Friday, June 6, 2008
You Can’t Be God But The One Who Will See His Creation From Your Eyes Will Never Forget You While Praying
The very well known poets have described the eyes as the most beautiful part of the human body. Sparkled eyes, smiling eyes, beautiful eyes, eyes deeper than sea etc are the most beautiful comments which can be given as a compliment. As a biological system eye is the special sense organ which is categorized as far sense from which we can admire the beauty and sense the danger. Without eyes we all will not able to perform. When a thought of life without eyes is so scary to imagine, the life itself is dreadful. We can talk about our beautiful dress by saying the colour and look but there are lakhs of people who never have seen the colour other than the black.
Cornea is a transparent part of human eye which helps in focusing the view. Vision will be dramatically reduced if the cornea becomes cloudy from disease, injury or infection. There are millions of people who are blind because of problems affecting the cornea. They can regain good vision by corneal transplantation (so called eye transplant or eye donation). Eye donation means people pledging to donate their eyes after death for restoring sight to corneal blind people.
The inability to see or lack of vision is called as blindness. Blindness can be caused by number of reasons varying from trauma to congenital, can be of one eye or both side, can be treated by intervention or being trained by professionals. There are some types of blindness which can be cured by corneal transplantation specially to the infants born with the cloudy cornea, which can make a difference to rest of their life.
According to an estimation 4.6 million people with corneal blindness that is curable through corneal transplantation. Out of this, 90% of the people with corneal blindness are below the age of 45 years including some 3 million below the tender age of 12.
There is a severe lack of donor eyes in 
The reasons for very low number of eye donations are
· Lack of awareness in general public
· Improper development of infrastructure
· Absence of motivation even among the trained personnel and professionals
· Social and religious taboos
There is no substitute for human tissue. The transplantation process depends upon the priceless gift of corneal donation from one human to the next. Another important part is that donor eyes can give the vision to two blind people as they are being transplanted to 2 recipients. However rest of the eye part can be used for the research and education purpose. Corneal transplantation is one of the small and easy surgical procedures which don’t take much time. Any person can donate the eyes no matter whether he uses spectacles or patient of T.B, any age and from any religion. All religion favors and recommend eye donation. Patients who are suffering from HIV or Hepatitis, leukaemia etc are relative contraindicated to prevent the infections to the medical staff and to the recipient.
Personal information and details of both donor and recipient are being kept confidential. A Special thanks is being sent by the Eye Bank to donor from the recipient as the eye is being transplanted. However, recipients and donor families can communicate with each other anonymously through the Eye Bank. It is free services provided by Govt or the Non profit organisation, so no fees is being charged from the donor or recipient.
A person can donate the eyes at any point of life. All one needs to do is bequeath his or her eyes by taking a simple pledge to donate the eye after death. The pledge forms are available at various national and state run eye banks or can visit www.sakshum.com, fill the pledge form and inform the relatives so that they can inform the Eye Bank after the death. You can cancel your donation by discarding the card provided by the Eye Bank.
The team of doctor or trained person would visit the donor home and take the eye. 10 cc of blood sample is collected from the donor for testing. This procedure hardly takes some 20 min. that would not delay the funeral ceremony. The procedure would not leave any scar or results in disfigurement. The dead person’s eyes are viable till 6 hrs of death. Mean while the relatives can raise the head, close the eyes and cover it with the wet cloth and switch of the A/C or fan to prevent drying. If possible, apply antibiotic eye drops periodically in the deceased’s eyes to reduce the chance of any infection.
To improve eye donation status, awareness should be created to prevent the corneal injuries especially in rural areas, benefits of eye donation, potential donors are to be motivated and myths should be clear with scientific reasoning. More number of eye banks has to open so that the process becomes easier and approachable.
Let eye donation be your family tradition so that your beloved ones can see the world and you even after they leave this world.
The eye donation is one of the noblest deeds one can do.
Posted byNeeti at 5:55 PM
Labels: Eye Donation
Its not a comment, its a compliment. an eye opening column and a truly good one, i must say, all true things are there, and as a member of civil society we ust come togeather for a cause which is related to everyone.