Kochi: Are you a traveller in any of the private buses starting from Angamaly? You have now the option of giving consent for donating eyes while purchasing the ticket to your destination from the bus conductor.
The conductor will hand over a declaration form on eye donation along with the ticket to you. You can fill the form in the bus itself and hand it over to the conductor or submit the filled form to Little Flower Hospital in the town, which has partnered with the Private Bus Owners Association, for the project named ‘Ticket to Sight.’
The project was inaugurated by Little Flower Hospital director, Father Paul V Madan, in the presence of hospital’s Eye Bank director, Dr Davis Puthukadan, Private Bus Owners Association president, Jiby A.P. and secretary Davis B.O.
According to Father Paul V Madan, who is also the president of Eye Bank Association, Kerala, though there were lakhs of consent letters for eye donation, hardly a few materializes as the organ had to be removed from a person pledged to give it in six hours of death.
The consent letter for donation was often forgotten by relatives. To counter this, Little Flower Hospital is focusing more on pledges by all family members. Over 200 eye (cornea) transplantations happen in Little Flower Hospital every year. It’s estimated that 600-800 transplantations are taking place in the State annually, but there are still hundreds in the queue for getting a cornea.
