Eye Donation

EYE DONATION- A horrible ACT, WITH AN ADDED RESPONSIBILITY S BALACHANDRAN, CGM, SBT I am just watching the two-hundredth episode of the Surya TVs popular programme Deal or No Deal featuring film star Mukhesh with Sri Kocho intentph, promoter and CEO of V-Guard radical and Rev. acquire Chirammel. It seems more than a concidence that when I sat down to draw up my thoughts on Organ donation, specially Eye-donation, this episode is playing on my television set.More than his entrepreneurial skill and management acumen Sri Kochouseph has been a personality for whom I cook immense admiration on account of his rare human-centred act a few years back when he presentd a kidney for a needy patient and thus gave a new inwardness and dimension to the much sullied and murky field of organ donation. Rev Father Chirammel was the person who prompted Sri Kochouseph to do this noble act. I am sure, the act of Sri Kochouseph would have sent out a message that one can be a donor of an organ with out any fear of ones own health and as a pure act of philanthropy.I am sure more and more people , healthy people, would come beforehand to be donors without any monetary consideration. This reminds me of the supreme act of compassion shown by the doctor-couple fromTrichy a few years back. Their plainly son, was fatally involved in a motor accident on the Chennai highway. The parents rushed to the spot on hearing the news, only to see their only child, a son who they thiught would preserve their noble profession, was in an almost critical state, with all symptoms ofan impending intelligence death.The couple were flooded with phone calls from friends who offered the best of treatment if the boy could be brought to Chennai. Fully equipped ambulance was ready to carry out the job. The couple with entreatys on their lips and dwindling hope in their hearts, accompanied the injured son in the vehicle, on its one hour move. But the boy couldnot complete the journey and his brain switc hed off enroute. That was a moment when any parent would tick off behaving rationally or with balance.Yet it was the mother who held her mind and suggested to her husband that they hurry with the ashes to the nearest best hospital, so that all the vital organs of the form could be salvaged and donated to needy persons. The husband did the rest by phoning up his friends anout their finding and requesting them to make arrangements for the extraction of the vital organs from their sons tree trunk and arranging to locate needy recepients .Cutting the long story short, today, this doctor-parents live with the propitiation of their son still living through the four lives whom he save in his death. The celstial level of their magnanimity is fit to be lauded in comfortable words. It is special persons like Sri Kochouseph and the doctors who inspire me. Of the constantly increasing throng of persons needing oirgan transplants, it is the persons with corneal blindness, who toip the l ist.I rememebr having read that in India there are over 5 milion persons with this font of blindness, which can be cured if they can get suitable donors, in time. The easiest part of eye donation is that the donor can pledge to donate his eyes and the actual donation needs to be done only on the death of the donor. Having been a compulsive, voluntary blood donor ever since I reached the age of 19, I was much pained, when, in 2002 I was conscious that I could no longer donate blood since I was hypertensive.I had to promise a halt to my unbroken saga of 62 blood donations for 31 years. It was thusly that I decided to donate my eyes on my death. The only prayer I have today is that my eyes should be worthy of use at that time. This adds a major responsibility on me to keep my egotism safe from ailments that would affect the usability of my eyes. If my daily prayers include a wish to defend me from debilitating ailments, it is more to protect my eyes for whoever the recepient coul d be.