Cornea Retrieval Programme
1.Hospital Cornea Retrieval Programme
“Hospital based cornea retrieval programme (HCRP)” refers to eye donation consented through proactive engagement with hospitals and donor families for eye donations. The HCRP focuses on hospitals to retrieve corneas because of several inherent advantages, such as availability of potential donors, their medical history, quality of cornea and reduction of time interval between death and corneal excision. Thus, from hospitals with less efforts, more corneas can be collected and that too of better quality. It is a cost-effective method of cornea retrieval.
Our Professionally trained Eye Donation Counsellor cum Technician(EDCT) maintains close liaison with nursing staff of hospitals so that we get immediate notification of death occurring in hospitals to EBSR. After notification, EDCT scrutinises the case and also his medical history to find out the suitability of the deceased person for eye donation. Once the EDCT finds that eyes are suitable for donation, he contacts family members of the deceased person to take consent for eye donation. After consent is received, corneas are retrieved by the EDCT.
2.Voluntary Donation
Large number of deaths take place at home. In such cases, either the family members are self-motivated or their acquaintances, volunteers or social workers approach and counsels them for eye donation. Thereafter, eye bank is contacted for eye donation. As soon as eye donation call is received in the Eye Bank, a trained Technician is sent to the residence of the deceased to retrieve the cornea.
Thus, this method requires very high degree of awareness and sense of commitment of the family for the cause of eye donation.
The proportion of eyes collected through this method is low and quality of corneas received are also not so good as compared to collection through HCRP.