Poonam Dhillon pledges to donate eyes

Mumbai, Apr 7 (UNI) After Aishwarya Rai, it is turn of another cine star Poonam Dhillon of ''Noorie'' fame who pledged to donate her eyes today for the cause of blind.

Speaking at the World Contact Lens Congress here, Poonam said ''there is still a lot of stigma attached to eye donation and as such we need to deliberate on this issue and increase the awareness so that more and more people can pledge to donate their eyes.'' ''Each one of us including media should contribute in this endeavour to enhance the awareness,'' she said adding ''there is a certain amount of vanity involved where people think how will they look after donating eyes.'' The three-day Congress, organised by Contact Lens Society of India along with International Academy for Advances in Opthalmology, Refractive Society of India and International Consortium for the Alleviation of blindness, will conclude on April 9.

On the occasion, Conference Chairman Dr Keiki Mehta said,'' There has been a spurt of developments in the field of contact lenses.

Advent of the newer Silicone Hydrogels and the new Ortho-K reverse geometry lenses have made most of the standard contact lens fitting techniques redundant. The age of looking at an eye with a torch and prescribing contact lenses has been supplanted by the sophisticated computerized topographical systems with their advanced algorithms.'' ''We need to understand the physical and psysiological aspects of contact lenses,'' he said.

The key note speakers spoke about five elements that make a complete contact lens - moisture ,oxygen, flexibility,lubricity, and ultra-violet rays protection.

According to doctors, 45 per cent patients say their lenses are comfortable at the end of the day while 78 per cent of them observe that they want to wear their lenses for a longer time.

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