Nowhere in sight

13/10/2019

You can say, your eyes betray you, every time you try to do something differently. It is no wonder why, that the eyes are said to be the open windows to the soul of a person. Let your eyes change someone's life by donating eyes. One eye donation can make two blind people see. Contrary to this, inaugurated over two months back, the state-of-the-art Eye Bank at Government Medical College Jammu, dedicated to restoring sight to the corneal blind, is still not operational. Eye Bank was inaugurated on July 22 this year, stating that it will be equipped with all necessary equipments for Corneal Transplant procedures and will provide a full scope of services ranging from counseling for families, cornea/eye collection besides processing and distribution of corneas to the needy. The inauguration was just an eye wash as the authorities of GMC Jammu have failed to even secure registration of the Eye Bank, which is mandatory to make it functional and conducting cornea transplant surgeries. Earlier the GMC Jammu got conditional registration for the Eye Bank two times but as the authorities failed to fulfill requisite formalities within prescribed time, registration was withdrawn.
In the near past, the ophthalmologists of GMC Jammu performed several cornea transplantations in normal Operation Theatre (OT) of the department when they had conditional registration of the Eye Bank but since the concerned authorities withdrew the same, no cornea transplant has been done in the Hospital. The Hospital authorities were holding J&K Medical Supplies Corporation Limited (JKMSCL) responsible for inordinate delay in making Eye Bank functional, stating that Corporation has failed to procure required drugs, equipments and other necessary machinery for the bank but now when the Corporation has provided everything required for the facility, they still could not make the facility functional.
The Eye Bank of the GMC Jammu could not be granted registration as a mandatory inspection of the facility by the experts is still pending. Eye Bank of the GMC Jammu could not be granted permanent registration till the infrastructure and equipment/ machinery of the facility are inspected by a team of experts from another health institution where such a facility is already functional as it is a mandatory procedure. Besides this, the facility is also awaiting installation of autoclaves which have been procured from a Chandigarh based company and it is also one of the causes behind failure of the GMC authorities to conduct inspection of the facility.

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