Stopped due to the COVID pandemic, corneal transplants start in city, as donations become possible with guidelines on eye retrieval
Since May, following the announcement of guidelines, Mumbai has been receiving an average of 50 eye donations monthly
After a gap of more than a year, eye donations make a slow and steady start in the city, enabling corneal transplants, which was suspended owing to the pandemic. Since May, following the announcement of guidelines, Mumbai has been receiving an average of 50 eye donations monthly.
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“Corneal transplant, which is an elective procedure, was stopped as the novel Coronavirus was new and we didn’t have any guidelines in place,” said Dr Kavita Rao, director, Cornea, Cataract and LASIK Centre at Aditya Jyot Hospital.
Vikas Vira, president, Tarun Mitra Mandal NGO
She recently did a suture-less cornea transplant on a 49-year-old man. “The cornea got damaged because of an eye infection. But he had to wait for nine months for the procedure.”
Home collection helped
Vikas Vira, president of Tarun Mitra Mandal NGO, said they got about 15-25 calls every month initially during the pandemic, but had to turn them down because of the COVID-19 norms. Amid the pandemic, the cornea retrieval started last September from the deceased in non-COVID hospitals, but there were hardly any.
The city’s monthly cornea donation in pre-pandemic times was 150. Around 120 people are on the wait list for cornea transplant now, he said. “With eye donations picking up, the average wait list is around three months. We are looking forward to clearing the backlog. Around 30 to 45 new registrations are happening every month. Last month, we had 45 new registrations,” said Vira.
The rules
The Union health ministry this year laid down guidelines for home retrieval. “We have to check if the deceased had COVID-19 in the past 45 days. Also, we check if the deceased had acute respiratory illness or fever or any symptoms associated with COVID-19. Until we have a copy of the death certificate and complete history from relatives or physicians, home retrieval is kept on hold. Our technicians wear PPE suits and take all precautions,” Vira said. “It is also mandatory to collect nasal swabs of the deceased.”
Dr Quresh Maskati, trustee of Parel Eye Bank, said, “Earlier, because of lack of rules, we couldn’t take the eyeballs unless the donor was COVID-19 negative. We then decided to do only hospital retrieval, as it was easy to ascertain the COVID-19 status of the deceased.” With home collection starting, the donations are going up. As per the data from Parel Eye Bank, there were 21 donations in 2020 and 172 in 2021, out of which 112 were donated in the past five months. Before the pandemic, it had collected 340 corneas, of which 126 were utilised. In 2019, 311 corneas were donated and 106 used.
Also Read: Skin no show: Donations of the organ fall in pandemic, says NBC medical director
50
Mumbai’s monthly cornea donation post pandemic
150
Mumbai’s monthly cornea donation before pandemic
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