India, the country of a million surprises, is also one such country among the developing ones that is in desperate need of cornea transplants.
Cataract and Refractive Error of the lenses are some of the leading causes of blindness in India. Corneal Blindness is caused due to deficiency of Vitamin A in the diet as well as eye trauma or congenital diseases.
It has been found that over 20% of those suffering from blindness all over the world reside in India bringing the count to 7.8 Million blind people as compared to 39 Million worldwide.
But out of all these 7.2 million, almost 4.6 Million blind could be cured of their problems through corneal transplants. Even though 35 thousand corneas are collected every year in India, the number of new cases reaches a staggering 25 thousand annually.