Vijayawada: People exhorted to donate eyes to light up blinds life

Vijayawada: Coinciding with the 36th Foundation Day of Swetcha Gora Eye Bank, the eye donation fortnight would be celebrated starting from Tuesday to bring awareness on the importance of donating cornea to help the blind to see again, said executive director of the eye bank Dr Goparaju Samaram.

Addressing the media here on Monday, Dr Samaram said that everyone should come forward to donate the eyes to bridge the gap between the heavy demand for cornea grafting and actual availability of the corneas.

He said that as per the estimates prepared by the Central government, there are 1.6 crore blind people in the country. However, the blindness of 30 lakh people could be rectified with cornea grafting. He appealed to people to donate the eyes in the largest interests of the blind people.

In Andhra Pradesh alone, there are 3.37 lakh visually impaired persons with half of them children. If a large number of eye donations take place, these persons would see the light.

Referring to the fortnight-long celebrations, he said that a series of awareness programmes would be undertaken in schools and colleges apart from various areas in and around Vijayawada city.

There will be competitions in essay writing, painting, slogan preparing, singing on eye donation for high school and college students at the atheist centre conference hall.

Eye check-up programmes would be taken up for students and games would be conducted for the visually impaired students of Vijaya Mary Integrated School for the Blind at Gunadala. The valedictory programme of the celebrations would be held on September 8.