Patna: The Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Asia branch of SightLife, a US eye bank in Seattle. SightLife Asia vice-president Atul Kapoor and IGIMS director N.R. Biswas signed the pact.
A team of SightLife would come over at IGIMS within the next 10-12 days and conduct an audit of the hospital's eye bank. The team will train the counsellors, technicians and doctors of IGIMS, who are involved with the hospital's eye bank based on the audit report, which would identify areas in which the IGIMS eye bank needs improvement.
The head of the ophthalmology department of IGIMS, Dr Bibhuti Prasad Sinha, said the hospital approached the US-based eye bank after finding their successful collaboration with King George's Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow for running their eye bank. According to Bibhuti, the number of corneal transplant has increased at KGMU after its tie-up with SightLife.
"IGIMS is the first hospital among government and private facility to start eye bank facility in the state. We have so far done 230 corneal transplants. Considering the year span which we have used for achieving this is quite high. We performed the first corneal transplant in October 2014. We are still using unprofessional and untrained counsellors in the job. It is not that we have not provided any training to our counsellors (who motivate deceased families to donate the cornea of the deceased person) and the technicians (who are involved in retrieving corneal tissues from deceased people along with the doctor) but people with SightLife can give world-class training to our counsellors and technicians, which is basically being followed by US-based doctors. This would help us be more professional," said Bibhuti.
He added: "The SightLife team will impart a three-month training to our doctors, counsellors and technicians."
Senior ophthalmologist with IGIMS Dr Nilesh Mohan said if required SightLife would also provide a counsellor who would be later used by IGIMS as the hospital requires more counsellors to do the job.
The IGIMS has also started training doctors and paramedical staff of other state-run medical college and hospitals. "We have already trained doctors and paramedics of Anugrah Narayan Medical College and Hospital, Gaya. Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital doctors are also going to undergo training at our hospital from August 1. Doctors from Patna Medical College and Hospital and Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital, Bhagalpur, are also going to arrive for the training. Doctors of all these hospitals would set up eye banks at their respective hospitals after training," added Bibhuti.
"After training of our doctors and paramedics by the SightLife team, we would try to enhance the corneal donations part so that we are able to fulfil the corneal requirement of the state. Corneal transplant has been started at 2-3 more hospitals over here but they are procuring cornea from outside the state. The best scenario would be that IGIMS should procure as much cornea so that we can supply cornea to other health facilities for corneal transplant," added Bibhuti.
On Monday, corneal transplant was performed on two patients at IGIMS, a 65-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man. Both transplants were done through in-house cornea donation.
