Nearly 4.8 million people are facing difficulties in India. Corneal Damage is a leading cause of blindness. It results in blurred vision and eventually blindness, it is the second most type of blindness, and corneal blindness is 7.4% of total blindness in India.
According to RTI data, States like Goa, Jammu, and Kashmir, and some of the northeast, along with island states, have zero cornea collection in the year 2021-22. Also, the Data shows that these states have been actively performing poorly since 2016. As far as you see, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana have topped the cornea collection list.
According to the National Program for Control of Blindness (NPCB), every year in India, about 40-50% of donated eyes/corneas are used for corneal transplantation yearly. However, not all clear corneas were found acceptable for transplantation Because of various medical reasons, aged donors, or pre-existent Diseases.
Health Ministry administrators confessed that they faced difficulties in achieving the aims for donated cornea collection in the country because of a lack of knowledge, myths about eye donation, and inadequate eye banking facilities.
The corneal can be defined as a clear front window of the eye. The cornea is made of layers of cells, which help to focus light into the eye so that you can see these layers work together to protect your eye and provide clear vision.
Your cornea should be healthy. You may find it hard to understand if it is damaged, as your cornea can't be healed or repaired. It would be best if you went forward with a corneal transplant. In that process, the damaged corneal is replaced with the clear one.
During the covid pandemic, corneal transplants stayed between 30,740 in (2016-17) to 24,783 (in 2021-22) while falling to a low of 11,859.
Approximately 15 million people are blind in India. Among those 15 million, 3.5 million are reported cases of Corneal Blindness, one of the most common causes of blindness across the country, accompanying 30,000 additional cases done yearly.
To cure this, a dead person's donated eyes are used to replace the damaged cornea. Therefore, they are appealing to the nation to donate the eyes of deceased family members and help to give off or reflect light into the darkness