JOKERS CALLED INDIANS
Shocking waste of eye donations
In a shocking report, a Parliamentary Standing Committee on health has expressed disbelief over thousands of eyes donated to the government eye banks going waste because of lack of infrastructure and maintenance facilities.
Only 432 of the 13,896 eyes donated between 2005 and 2008 could be actually transplanted on recipients and the rest were either thrown away or utilised only for research purposes. "There was a big gap between overall figures of eyes donated and utilised during the period in nine states," the committee headed by Amar Singh said in a report tabled in Parliament.
The states scrutinised were Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
The committee report points out that only five per cent of eyes collected by the government eye banks could be used, while it was much better in case of the private eye banks which reported use of 50 percent eyes from among 44,064 collected in the nine districts during the four years.
India needs about 80,000 to one lakh eyes a year to meet the demand. While the government’s eye banks are able to collect less than 15,000 a year on an average, the private eye banks collect about 45,000Doctors say the donated eyes are required to be preserved and refrigerated for use in maximum of 48 hours as after that time, the eyes become unusable.
"The low level of utilisation of those eyes collected suggests that all is not well with the existing arrangement and the system suffers from some grave inadequacies," the committee report said, pointing out that the government spent a whopping Rs. 650 crores between 2007 and 2010 on the National Programme for Control of Blindness, major part of which went in funding the eye banks.
Only 432 of the 13,896 eyes donated between 2005 and 2008 could be actually transplanted on recipients and the rest were either thrown away or utilised only for research purposes. "There was a big gap between overall figures of eyes donated and utilised during the period in nine states," the committee headed by Amar Singh said in a report tabled in Parliament.
The states scrutinised were Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
The committee report points out that only five per cent of eyes collected by the government eye banks could be used, while it was much better in case of the private eye banks which reported use of 50 percent eyes from among 44,064 collected in the nine districts during the four years.
India needs about 80,000 to one lakh eyes a year to meet the demand. While the government’s eye banks are able to collect less than 15,000 a year on an average, the private eye banks collect about 45,000Doctors say the donated eyes are required to be preserved and refrigerated for use in maximum of 48 hours as after that time, the eyes become unusable.
"The low level of utilisation of those eyes collected suggests that all is not well with the existing arrangement and the system suffers from some grave inadequacies," the committee report said, pointing out that the government spent a whopping Rs. 650 crores between 2007 and 2010 on the National Programme for Control of Blindness, major part of which went in funding the eye banks.
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