Friday, May 15, 2009

A Taboo called “Eye donation”

My wife was having red eye and we went to Narayana Netralaya. There we found the Eye donation form.  We both filled it and completed the formalities.  With there permission, I took some 10 forms with me, to give to my friends at office.

I sent out an e-mail to my gang in office, saying, I have the form, let me know anyone is ready to donate.  The first two people, Uma and Vinod were generous enough to fill the form with in 5 mins.  They  collected some blank form from me, so that they can give to their family members too.

What was surprising for me was, most of the people were not willing or afraid to donate.  In some cases, they were even afraid to talk about that !!!  All of them are well educated people, who are living in metro and spent most of their time in big cites. 

If this is the mind set of these educated-metro people, I wonder how many of the small town and less educated people would be willing to make an eye donation ?

Times of India and Tata was running campaigning for making people go for voting.  If that money and time were spent on more realistic causes like this, that would changed the life of at lest one person or family.

Any one need more info on eye donation, do contact me.  Believe me : You don’t carry anything after death.  If you don’t donate, theseprecious  gifts would be either burred or buried.  Eye or any organ donation is much better than any pilgrim that you do.

Oh..forgot to tell you.  My friend Raghav, he is willing to donate, and what ignited him is, Dr.Rajkumar had donated.  Salute to Dr.Raj, I am sure he educated /  encouraged millions of people to do the same. 

5 comments:

Bindhu Unny said...

I guess the reluctance is because many believe the eyelid also is harvested and it'll look gross. As you said more awareness is needed.
I remember signing the form when I was in college. But that is useless now. :-)

അരുണ്‍ കരിമുട്ടം said...

I think, now new generation is ready for donation

Sriletha Pillai said...

good msg.mal blog thudangiyille?ddnt c any posts.

Unknown said...

good thinking...
g8 message..
let us hope 4 a better world...

Prof.Mohandas K P said...

Yes, it is true. But there is one more thing. Even educated people think that the eyses will be taken out and face will be disfigured. In fact only cornea is taken out and once donation form is signed and information that the person has died reaches the hospital, they come and take the cornea. No need for any one to take the body to hospital.Since the eyses of the dead body is closed, it will not be known that the eyes(cornea) has been removed. Even blood donation, people are reluctant due to misconceptions. Even though we claim to be 100% lietrate, we have to get rid of many superstitions and misconceptions.
I congratulate you on your efforts.