Corneal transplant waiting list soon on centralized platform – Times of India

NEW DELHI: The list of patients waiting for a corneal transplant in India will soon be available on a centralized platform. While waiting lists for organs such as heart, liver and kidney are centrally available on the website National Organization for Organ and Tissue Transplantation (NOTTO), until now no such list was available for cornea.
Recently, NOTTO Director Dr. Anil Kumar has written to all States/UTs to issue a directive to registered hospitals and eye banks to share the data regarding the list of patients waiting for cornea transplant, number of cornea donations and transplants and the number of corneal transplants. stored and used.
Cornea is the transparent tissue that covers the eye. It lets in light and performs two-thirds of the focusing tasks. For people suffering from vision loss due to irreparable tissue damage, transplantation is the only option. It involves replacing a diseased or damaged cornea with a cornea donated by a deceased person.
Dr. Namrata Sharma, professor of ophthalmology at AIIMS, who is also associated with the Eye Bank Association of India, said India needs nearly two lakh corneas per year to treat patients suffering from blindness that causes irreparable damage to the tissue.
“In 2023-24, only 49,315 corneas were collected, of which 27,394 could be used for transplantation,” Dr Sharma said, adding that the availability of information regarding the collection and use of the cornea would help policymakers ensure optimal use of the collected tissues and to ensure fair distribution. Good.
The NOTTO has said that eye banks operating across the country must have a minimum of 100 collections per year or risk losing their license to operate.
India has about 726 registered eye banks, but only about 200 are operational, according to government sources. “Many eye banks are opened for government support or as a prerequisite for starting postgraduate courses in ophthalmology. But they are not optimally maintained,” said a source.
The latest guideline from NOTTO, the nodal agency for organ and tissue allocation and distribution in the country, states that government agencies should examine the eye/cornea collection data annually by the registered eye banks and in case of less performance, they may consider giving of a warning to the eye bank for expanding their eye donation activities. “…otherwise, in case of substandard performance, their extension will not be considered for the next term,” the order said.