Capital gets new eye bank
The city got a new eye bank on Monday with the inauguration of Prof LP Agarwal Rotary Memorial Eye Bank at Sunder Lal Jain (SLJ) Hospital.
SLJ has been sending collected eyes to the National Eye Bank for the past few months. With this new facility at the hospital, now the doctors can transplant eyes here itself.
Inaugurating the eye bank, Vice-President Hamid Ansari emphasised on the need to work towards reducing the number of visually challenged in the country which at present stands at 12.5 million.
Nearly 1.5 million of them suffer from corneal blindness which can be treated through eye transplant.
“The target set for 2010-11 was collection of 60,000 eyes, but all the eye banks of the country together could collect just over 43,000. Of these 30-40 per cent are usually not suitable for transplantation and hence, we are left with only 25-30 thousand usable eyes,” said Ansari.
