KARACHI: Eye banking is being successfully practised in many Muslim countries, including Jordan, where authorities are now able to generate local eye donations in significant numbers. Credit for this is attributed to years of dedicated efforts that involved acquiring favourable fatwas, as well as reaching out and creating awareness among religious scholars at the grassroots level.

These views were expressed by Collin Ross, the executive director of the US-based Eversight International (EI) — an independent NGO dedicated to the restoration of sight and elimination of blindness worldwide — during an interview held on Wednesday against the backdrop of a conference to be held in Karachi from Aug 19.

An Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA)-certified professional, Ross is visiting Pakistan for the second time this year with the objective to strengthen eye banking efforts in the country with the help of local organisations.

Presently, eye banking is limited to a few institutions in Pakistan, which, according to some estimates, have over 100,000 corneal blind persons.

They, experts believe, have a hope to see and live a normal life if myths and misconceptions surrounding deceased organ donation are removed and people opt for eye donation.

“One of the misconceptions is that the dead body is disfigured when the cornea is removed. This is absolutely wrong as only the front portion of the eye is removed,” Ross clarified, adding that in many countries an eye cap is placed in place of the removed cornea to give a normal look.

According to him, the US presently has 70 eye banks (a facility needed to retrieve and store eyes for cornea transplants and research) and last year 130,987 corneas were recovered in the whole country.

Recently, Ross has travelled to Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi, holding meetings with experts representing the Layton Rahmatullah Benevolent Trust, Al-Shifa Trust, King Edward Medical University, Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, and the Pakistan Eye Banking Society, to look into opportunities in a bid to strengthen eye banking in Pakistan.

“There are institutions with eye banks in Pakistan, for instance the Al-Shifa Trust that received 350 corneas from our organisation last year; however, the level of activity is low here in terms of local donations,” he said, pointing out that there was no way the limited number of imported corneas could meet the huge demand for corneas in Pakistan, and local eye donation needed to be encouraged.

The EI, he said, was supporting eye banking efforts in many countries including Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, South Korea and China.

On his experiences in Muslim countries, he said that community connections played a key role in motivating people towards eye donation. According to Ross, it wasn’t religion but rather cultural issues presented in the garb of religious ideology which prevented people from donating their eyes.

In Pakistan, he said, the organisation would provide technical assistance as well as help in setting up a network to ensure standardised eye banking practices as was being done in the US, but the challenge to have grassroots level support for eye donation needed to be taken up by local experts. “We would like that Pakistan has a network of eye banks,” he said.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2016