Kalam calls for new donor friendly law on eye donations

The target set by World Health Organisation (WHO) to reduce visual impairment by 14 per cent and blindness by 20 per cent in the next eight years is small, former president and eminent scientist APJ Abdul Kalam said here on Monday.  

Addressing around 1,500 delegates at the inauguration of the ninth General Assembly of International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB),  Kalam said India must aim to reduce all vision impairment by half by 2020 through development of better technology and sharing of knowledge.

Kalam said the government should make a new donor-friendly law to allow the recipient and the donor’s family to meet each other. As per the existing laws, the donor’s family is not supposed to know to whom the cornea has been donated, and the recipient and his or her family are not supposed to know whose cornea has been received.

Kalam said the relationship between a patient and a doctor went beyond medical needs. Nanotechnology had large-scale applications in drug delivery systems, he said and hoped further research would lead to a cost-effective and innovative treatment process for glaucoma.