MGRC Sahiyara Eye Bank is a non-profit organization committed to the noble cause of Eye Donation.
In event of death, the following procedures should be done by the relatives of the deceased
The Sahiyara Eye Bank established in October 2008 with the aim that every corneally blind person gets vision.
In India there are about 10 million people who are blind (NPCB-WHO). Out of this 80% of the blindness is preventable or curable. There are 2.5 million corneal blinds that require corneal grafting. Some of them are their 1st or 2nd decade of life. These visions can be improved by corneal transplantation.
Eye donation changes Lives !
One person’s donated corneas can change the lives of two corneally blinds.
The eye bank work round the clock 365 days to collect, evaluate and store donated Eyes/Corneas. The eyes /corneas are collected from human donors within 4 to 10 hours of death with cooled oculars. If the body is refrigerated within 6 hours of death, donation can be taken up to 14 to 24 hours depending upon the condition of the corneas.
The harvested corneas are preserved in a suitable preservative medium i.e. MK medium (Mc Carey Kaufman’s medium) & Cornisol transported to eye bank for processing. Under MK medium cornea could be stored for 4 days & in cornisol medium cornea could be stored for 14 days. Sometimes whole eyes are enucleated from a donor in moist chambers. Only if the serology result is negative, the donor cornea is used for transplant.
The cornea is evaluated under the slit lamp. It enables to study the layers of the cornea individually (Epithelium, Stroma, Endothelium).The slit lamp view helps to assess and decide its utility for PK, DSEK, DMEK, DALK, KLA, K-pro or therapeutic, research & training purposes.
Endothelium is the innermost layer of cornea and is primarily responsible for the quality of the vision after a cornea grafting surgery. The assessment of the endothelium cell density becomes important to decide the utility of the tissue. Specular microscopy allows direct high magnification of the endothelial cells and consequently better judgment of its status by counting the number of cells / mm square.
The acceptability of all corneas and/or eyes received is subject to several criteria and evaluation is noted in the Cornea Evaluation Form. Maintaining proper track record for the utility of the tissues is very important for eye banks to analyze the rate of utility and to review their statistics. The eyes/Corneal buttons when ready after processing will be distributed to the Corneal surgeons. The proper records of receipts and disimbursement of the donor cornea is ensured. The proper indenting requests and issuing of the cornea is done and the utilization of the cornea properly is ensured, in compliance to the Ethical Codes of the eye bank.
Sahiyara Eye Bank is a non-profit, social initiative to serve the community. With millions of visually impaired people in the country, we felt it is our moral responsibility to further the cause of eye donations. We would urge each and every citizen to join us in our march towards helping our brothers in need.
