Organ Donation

September 2026

A tissue or organ transplant is an act of faith; it is a compact between fellow human beings, and a vote in favor of our collective future together. Every year, between August and September, India celebrates this spirit of generosity with the eye donation fortnight (observed from August 25 to September 8 this year). This fortnight is an opportunity to reach out to our many stakeholders, raise awareness, and spread the message on eye donation.

Tissue and organ transplantations are modern-day medical miracles. For us corneal surgeons, cornea transplantation surgery is an extraordinary privilege; it helps us lead our patients from darkness to light. Nearly 120 years ago, an Austrian ophthalmologist transplanted clear corneal tissues from an accident victim onto the eyes of a 45-year-old laborer whose eyes had been severely injured in a workplace accident. The transplantation in one eye succeeded, enabling him to return to work. From that pioneering beginning, cornea transplantation has evolved to become one of the most successful forms of transplantation in medicine.

Behind every successful cornea transplant surgery, however, lies a complex chain of people and processes. Every link in this chain must work well. We need systems that facilitate retrieving corneas at scale; eye banks that can evaluate, process, preserve, and distribute donated tissues while ensuring quality; trained corneal surgeons who can perform increasingly sophisticated procedures; and teams that can provide patients with appropriate long-term care. If any of these links is weak, patients may wait months or even years for a transplant or end up losing the eye from poor quality medical care.

India needs approximately 100,000 corneal transplants every year, while we currently perform around 30,000. I have written earlier about the many ways in which we can bridge this gap. One of the inertial forces holding us back is a lack of awareness.

Eye Donation Fortnight

LVPEI has been a pioneer in India’s eye banking movement and in performing sight-restoring transplant surgeries. The Ramayamma International Eye Bank at LVPEI brought high-volume, high-quality eye bank practices from the USA to India, ushering in modern eye banking practices at the turn of the millennium. We have been building on that foundation over these many years.

Through the Hospital Cornea Retrieval Program, grief counsellors posted in general hospitals, sensitively approach bereaved families about the possibility of cornea donation. Once donated, the tissues are processed and distributed for transplantation. Our corneal surgeons, some of the best in the world, then perform procedures ranging from conventional cornea transplantation to complex surgeries to restore sight.

The Eye Bank is at the centre of this ecosystem: it is the hub from which our grief counsellors reach out to general hospitals. Counsellors, technicians and other eye bank personnel are trained here. The donated tissue is evaluated, processed, stored, and distributed for transplantation or research—all aspects that are central to an eye bank’s functioning.

But an eye bank has another responsibility that is equally important: advocacy and raising awareness.

Take this year’s eye donation fortnight: LVPEI’s Infosys Foundation eye bank in Kadapa and Mohsin Eye Bank in Visakhapatnam (both in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh) conducted awareness programmes for the public as well as medical professionals. Project Clear, one of our initiatives to address corneal vision loss in India, facilitated about 77 eye donation pledges (people can pledge to donate their eyes after their passing).

These may appear to be small activities amid our busy lives. But awareness is built through such steady drumbeats – one conversation, one meeting, one pledge and one family at a time.

The Eye Bank of Tomorrow

LVPEI’s eye banks represent some of the best of what is possible in India. Yet the larger national picture reminds us how much remains to be done. Of the approximately 750 registered eye banks in India, only about 20–25 retrieve more than 100 corneas annually while meeting international standards of practice. Despite an acute shortage of donor corneas, we have not yet been able to unlock the potential of these underperforming eye banks. My colleagues Sujata Das, Sunita Chaurasia and Hariharan Kalyanasundaram have been working to share best practices and support policy initiatives that can help change this.

At LVPEI, meanwhile, we are also beginning to imagine what the eye bank of tomorrow might look like. A couple of years ago, Sayan Basu, LVPEI’s Prof. D. Balasubramanian Chair of Eye Research, articulated a vision for developing a Cell, Tissue and Eye Bank at LVPEI. The idea reflects the extraordinary changes taking place in ophthalmology. The future will increasingly involve regenerative medicine, cell therapy, tissue engineering and biofabrication alongside conventional tissue transplantation.

Very soon, an integrated facility at LVPEI will process not just corneal tissue but also other biological materials and products relevant to the eye—including cell and gene-based products—manufactured under sterile, GMP-compliant conditions.

This is an exciting development!

Beyond Eyes

A few weeks ago, MOHAN Foundation, whose vision is to ensure that every individual with end-stage organ failure have access to the ‘gift of life’, conducted a workshop at our Kallam Anji Reddy campus in Hyderabad. This interaction raised an interesting question for us: what can organisations working in eye donation learn from those working in organ donation and what can we achieve together?

There are obvious areas of convergence. We often work in the same places—general hospitals or large, multi-specialty facilities. We speak to families at similarly difficult moments. We depend on sensitive counselling, public trust, efficient retrieval systems and strong hospital partnerships. There are, of course, important differences. Corneal tissue is retrieved after death, whereas organs such as the kidney or part of the liver can also be donated by living donors. Yet the underlying human impulse is the same: the willingness to allow something of oneself, or of someone one loves, to give another person a chance at sight, or at life.

The common ground offers opportunities for collaboration, shared learning and perhaps, in the future, more integrated approaches to donation.

People sometimes ask, LVPEI has already retrieved over 120,000 corneas and performed over 60,000 transplants. The system is established and working. What is left to do?

The answer, as our founder often reminds us, is that we have barely scratched the surface. There are still thousands waiting for sight. There are eye banks whose potential remains untapped. There are families who have never had a conversation about donation. And there is a new world of regenerative medicine, cell therapy and tissue engineering beginning to emerge before us.

Today, we have the knowledge and systems to restore sight to thousands. Our challenge now is to ensure the generosity, science and systems come together at a scale where no one who could benefit from a transplant is left waiting for want of tissue.

That is the future of eye banking I look forward to—and one that I believe LVPEI can help shape. I am excited by all the new vistas ahead of us in eye banking.

-Prashant Garg