Ophthalmologists for greater awareness to combat blindness

Guwahati, Aug 28 (UNI) Lack of awareness is posing to be the main stumbling block in fighting blindness through eye donations as the availability of corneas's falling sharply.

Well known ophthalmologist Dr H Bhattacharjee, medical director, Sri Sankardeva Netralaya said, ''People need to be motivated to come forward for donation if we are to combat blindness.'' The eye hospital yesterday felicitated families of 27 people, who had donated their eyes after death. The programme was a part of the National Eye Donation camp from August 25 to September 8.

Identifying corneal blindness as the major cause of loss of sight, Dr Bhattacharyya said, ''It is prevalent mostly in the economically weaker section and children. Nutrition is directly related to corneal blindness.'' He said low nutrition, injury and infection were the major causes of corneal blindness, adding that such blindness was curable and we should spread awareness about it.

Dr Kalyan Dutta, working with the same hospital, said they had conducted 350 corneas transplantations out of the total 500 the hospital had received since its foundation in 1994.

About 80-85 per cent of the transplantation had been successful with complete fees waiver for the economically poor section, who form a major chunk of the beneficiaries.

The Sri Sankardeva Netralaya Eye Bank was formed in 2000, which is the first accredited eye bank in the North-East. It is one the five eye banks in the region, the others being at the three government hospitals in Guwahati, Dibrugarh and Silchar and a fourth at Jorhat.

Arunachal Pradesh is also setting up one with the Sri Sankardeva Netralaya hospital providing the technical know-how.

UNI