Thursday, July 02, 2009

20 donated eyes go waste in G G Hospital due to delay

Call it lack of co-ordination or negligence, donation of as many as 20 eyes became useless when the parcels did not reach G G Hospital in Jamnagar on time. The matter surfaced when the parcels containing donated eyes were found lying unattended near the billing counter of the hospital— the biggest civil hospital in Saurashtra — on Tuesday night. The donor was found to be the Jain Oswal Mahajan Samaj in Gandhidham in Kutch. As per reports, the parcels were delivered by Patel Tours and Travels around 8 pm. Around 10 pm, some local journalists noticed that they were still lying at the billing counter instead of somewhere safe in the eye department. They remained there till 2 am, when the journalists forced the hospital authorities to take proper charge of the parcels. Detailed investigation later revealed that not only was there a delay in accepting the consignment, but things had been wrong from the very beginning. The hospital authorities admitted that there was a delay in receiving the parcels, as they did not know about their arrival. Besides, there was already a big delay in sending them, as all the eyes had crossed the transplant expiry date. For corneal transplants, the eyes can be preserved up to 72 hours at the most. The first donation was done on June 3, while the last was done on June 26. Even the last donation had passed the expiry date,” said Dr B D Gupta, Medical Superintendent, G G Hospital. Dr Gupta maintained that the hospital had placed ‘no requirement’ with the trust in Gandhidham, which supplied the eyes as social work.

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