Abstract

Introduction: Corneal diseases constitute a major burden of blindness worldwide, especially in under previliged countries like India. Corneal transplantation provides a great potential for visual rehabilitation and sight restoration to those who are blind due to corneal diseases. Eye donations are dependent on the people who are willing to donate their eyes and on the relatives who honor their pledge on death of the donor. Health education is an important step to increase awareness among people about eye donation and thus raising number of eye donations annually. In view of all the above factors, a hospital based study was conducted to assess the awareness about eye donation among people attending various outpatient department in a tertiary hospital of northern India catering mainly rural population using a questionnaire.

Methodology: The present cross sectional study included about 475 patients attending various Outpatient department of the hospital from January 2018 to June 2018.  The nature of the study was explained to the patients and a pretested semistructed questionnaire was asked to each and every patient. The questionnaire included questions regarding demographic data, age, sex, marital status, educational status, awareness about eye donation, source of awareness willingness to donate eyes and reasons to donate or not donate eyes.

Results: The mean age of subjects was 57 years (range 35 – 75 years), out of whom and 280 (58.9%) were males and 195(41.1%) were females. Out of 475, only 176 (37.1%) were literate; 188 (37%). About 232 respondents (48.8%) out of total subjects were aware of eye donation. The major source of information about corneal transplantation was T.v., magazine and other media sources (37.9%). Only 4.2% of the total subjects were aware about the fact that eye donation had to be done within 6 hours of death. The response of questionnaire was noted in all the patients.

Conclusion: Thus the data from our study suggested that there is a need to increase awareness among population about corneal transplantation by using appropriate strategies. The age group most willing to pledge eyes include 55-70 years age group. A lot has been done at the national level with the help of media but still more enforced efforts are required at the level of individual hospitals. There is need to conduct public awareness seminars/lectures during the eye donation week and putting up posters and charts regarding eye donation in wards and intensive care units.

Keywords: eye donation, blindness, corneal transplantation, health education.