Deathbed wishes of thousands of eye donors and the sentiments of their next-of-kin are going unfulfilled in the state because of the absence of eye banking facilities.
Only five districts in Kerala -- Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Kottayam, Ernakulam and Kozhikode -- have facilities to bank the cornea retrieved from the deceased.
Ernakulam has three hospitals - all private - which facilitates cornea retrieval. The other four districts have just one centre each.
Dr K Elangovan, Secretary, Department of Health and Family Welfare said the government is planning to come up with a separate network to facilitate donation of eyes, liver and kidneys.
Officials with the Kochi-based Society for Organ Retrieval and Transplantation (SORT), which pioneered the campaign for organ donation in the state, says they have recieved 7500 donor registrations, which includes organ, eye and body donations.
“SORT has received 500 wishes for eye donation alone. There are several other organisations in the state that deal with eye donation. If their figures are also taken into account, there would be more than 20,000 people who have pledged their eyes,” said Vasanth Shenoy, Joint Secretary, SORT.
If the government does not interfere and facilitate eye banks in all districts, these wishes will remain unfulfilled, says Shenoy, highlighting the case of a donor from Pathanamthitta. “If the state government could help in creating Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS) to help organ donation, that includes complicated procedures, setting up eye banks are not a big issue,” says Dr Ramesh Shenoy, General Secretary, SORT.
Dr N S D Raju, a former president of the All India Ophthalmological Society, says that district and taluk hospitals should have eye banks attached to them.