Corneal Donations Can Save Thousands Of Blindness; Al-Shifa

President of the Al-Shifa Trust, Maj. Gen (Ret) Rehmat Khan on Monday said that Corneal contributions had the potential to give a fresh lease on life to thousands of people

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Mar, 2024) President of the Al-Shifa Trust, Maj. Gen (Ret) Rehmat Khan on Monday said that Corneal contributions had the potential to give a fresh lease on life to thousands of people.

Talking to the media, he informed that as many as nine thousand people were on the trust's waiting list for corneal transplants while the trust receives 800 corneal donations annually.

Rehmat Khan added that there was a significant disparity between supply and demand of cornea across the world including Pakistan with corneal blindness accounting for up to 15 percent of all cases of blindness.

He urged the masses to donate corneas, pointing out that in the previous thirty years, only two people had donated corneas, and people were reluctant to do so for various reasons.

He informed that Americans provide corneal donations for Pakistani patients because residents were reluctant to volunteer for this charitable endeavor.

Rehmat said that, in August 2018, the first-ever eye bank was formed at the trust's Rawalpindi premises with the assistance of the American organization Ever sight, where individuals can submit their wills to donate corneas.

He continued by saying that as the corneal donations in the country were so few and 53 percent of eye patients lack access to donate corneas; Corneas have to be imported from the USA and Sri Lanka.

“A cornea is one of the simplest tissues to transplant because the donor and recipient do not need to match, ”he said and added that “it is a bloodless tissue that absorbs oxygen straight from the atmosphere.”

He further said that corneas from the elderly can be removed and transplanted into the eyes of much younger people.

Rehmat Khan said that the Al-Shifa Trust had begun corneal transplants at its Sukkar hospital in addition to its Rawalpindi facility.

In Sukkur Hospital, 50 corneal transplants had been completed successfully to date free of cost.

He informed that eighty percent of surgeries performed at the Al-Shifa eye hospitals in Rawalpindi, Sukkar, Kohat, Muzaffarabad, and Chakwal were free of charge while the trust had carried out around over one million different eye surgeries so far.