About 450 families of the remote Bhimavaram village have pledged their eyes to their visually handicapped brethren। These semi-literate villagers have easily done what their urban cousins are still hesitating to do despite umpteen campaigns about the nobility of eye donation. The families have voluntarily informed the doctors of the nearby Operation Eyesight Lions Eye hospital Garividi that whenever one of them dies, the cornea pair can be taken out to give sight to someone."It is a remarkable thing," said Dr Sunil Kumar Thangaraj, superintendent of the eye hospital. "It is generally believed that people in villages are not progressive." But people of Bhimavaram proved such critics wrong by filling the pledge forms en masse.
"Initially we didn't take them seriously as some people pledge their eyes in sudden enthusiasm and later retract," said Dr Thangaraj। But this village kept its word. "Whenever someone dies, they inform us and the relatives of the deceased are convinced by the community to donate the eyes," said the medical superintendent. It was in 2005 that a team form the eye hospital came to this village and screened a film on eye donation.
This inspired the headman of the village Pericharla Sanyasi Appala Raju, 65, whose words were treated with much respect। He soon convinced the entire village to agree to donate eyes after death. Till now, 12 pairs of eyes have been donated from this village alone. "One cannot imagine life without vision and I realised that by donating our eyes we will continue to see the world through other people," said Mr Appala Raju. "After seeing the film, I recalled a woman of our village who was born blind. She suffered a lot."
The OE Lions Eye Hospital is the only institution in rural Andhra Pradesh doing cornea transplantation। "There are about 300 persons waiting for cornea transplant in these areas," said Dr Thangaraj.
According to figures put out by the Eye Bank Association of India, around 4 lakh eye pairs are needed per year in the country, but only about 25,000 are available। "This shows how rare this village is," said Dr Thangaraj.
"Some of our relatives opposed my decision to donate my wife's eyes after she died but I did not listen to them," said Mamidi Appala Naidu of Bhimavaram. "But I called the doctors. One should not only live but also give life to others." Another villager, Pydinaidu, said elders had warned them that the ghosts of those whose eyes were taken out will come in dreams and curse them. "But I have had no such dream though I donated my mother's eyes," he said.
(Courtesy: Deccan Chronicle; July 22, 2007)
Salute to Bhimavaram village
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