Guwahati, Oct. 16: Dispur is contemplating importing corneas from south Indian states as well as the island nation Sri Lanka to make up for the shortfall in the state.

The move was initiated after Assam was found lagging far behind in terms of cornea collection under the centrally sponsored National Programme for the Control of Blindness.

Though the state had been given a target to collect 420 corneas for the current year, ending March 31, 2012, only 70 corneas could be collected so far.

Assam’s current blind population is estimated to be more than 2 lakh. Significantly, a substantial number of this population suffers from corneal blindness that is treatable only through transplantation. The number of blind people is fast increasing because of rise in patients suffering from glaucoma, a disease that causes permanent blindness.

“Going by donor responses till now, Assam is no way going to meet the target of the current year and the number of corneas collected may not even touch 100. People are still not aware of the concept of eye donation and hesitate to donate their eyes after death because of various beliefs and prejudices. The government’s various initiatives under the national programme to donate eyes have not yielded positive results,” an Assam government official told The Telegraph.

The official said the government had taken a serious note of the matter and decided to go the extra mile to make a reasonable number of corneas available in the state for transplantation.

He said the eye donation scenario in states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka was quite good and the health department was planning to import corneas from these states by air.

“The state health department officials will hold discussions with their counterparts in the south Indian states on the issue. We may not be able to import many corneas for various reasons, but if we can import at least some, the number of people getting back their eyesight will increase,” the official said.

Ideally, a cornea has to be extracted from a person within six hours of death. The donated corneas can be preserved for upto 3 to 4 days and sometimes even longer.

More than a decade ago, Assam used to import corneas from Sri Lanka. However, the practice was stopped because of various reasons, including the cost factor. The health department was not in a position to continue to bear the cost of such imports.

Sources said current health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, however, was open to all options and said money would not be a constraint while importing corneas from the neighbouring country.

“Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country which believes in Buddha’s concept of dana, or giving. Buddhists believe that it is an act of great merit to gift their eyes after death to someone living, who would then have the gift of sight. Hence, the number of people donating eyes in the island nation is huge,” the official said.

The International Eye Bank of Sri Lanka, Eye Donation Society is one of the world’s biggest eye banks, supplying corneas to many countries, including India.

Sources said the state government would discuss the matter with New Delhi before re-starting the practice of importing corneas from Sri Lanka.