Ramayamma International Eye Bank (RIEB), part of L V Prasad Eye Institute, Asia's biggest eye research and treatment centre is organising a massive awareness programme on eye donation in Andhra Pradesh during the next two weeks. The "Eye Donation Fortnight" being observed by RIEB since August 25 is to end on September 8, 2001, it is learnt.

The Eye Donation Fortnight is to find extensive media coverage to publicize the need for donor corneas. According to LVPEI sources, there will be special presentations at public functions, schools and colleges, during the period.

As part of the observations, RIEB will distribute publicity materials and posters about eye donation in hospitals, commercial complexes, and apartments and at places of worship. The programme is an annual event of the institute

As per the available statistics, eye donation in India does not match the demand, though the numbers grew substantially in the last two years. As per RIEB statistics, the nation wide eye donations totaled 17000 in 1999. It touched 18700 the next year. It is known that the patients at LVPEI have to wait for about six months before they get the donor cornea. The waiting time goes up to a year in other centres of India.

Out of the country's one crore blind, 20 percent are affected by corneal blindness, which can be treated only when a healthy cornea received from a deceased donor replaces the damaged cornea.

The RIEB is perhaps the only institution, which looks into all the aspects of eye donation in the country. Its activities include public awareness programmes, harvesting corneal tissues from donors, evaluation of the donor tissue to determine its suitability for corneal transplantation, preservation, screening of donor tissue samples for Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Hepatitis B Surface Antigen (Jaundice) and the distribution of donor tissue for use in corneal transplant surgery.

RIEB works towards combating corneal blindness by making quality donor corneas available to the corneal blind. How ever, the donor cornea the primary requisite as corneas are not commercially available. The RIEB is also engaged in the preparation and free distribution of the cornea Preservation medium known as the Mc Carey Kaufman Medium (MK Medium) to eye banks all over India and countries in South-east Asia. The MK medium allows the donor cornea to be preserved for a period of 96 hrs (4 days).

As part of a drive to procure more corneas, the RIEB has initiated long way back itself, the Hospital Cornea Retrieval Program (HCRP). The first such programme in India trained personnel (grief counselors) are placed (round the clock) in multi-specialty hospitals in the twin cities of Secunderabad & Hyderabad for counselling the bereaved family members and to motivate them to make an eye donation. About 60 percent of the total corneas procured by RIEB today have been acquired through this program.

The RIEB trains various cadres of Eye Bank professionals from India and other countries in the areas of planning of Eye Banking services, policy making in Eye Banking and Eye Banking techniques the programs. A three-month course for eye bank technicians, one-week long observership programme for ophthalmologists and other medical personnel and Grief Counseling of one month duration come under this department.