New Delhi: National Eye Bank at AIIMS here has added three hospitals to its cornea-retrieval network to strengthen the availability of donor tissue for transplantation.
The eye bank has signed MoUs with Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Medical Sciences and Dr RML Hospital, Indira Gandhi Hospital in Dwarka and Northern Railway Central Hospital for corneal tissue procurement, research and training under the AIIMS-Delhi Hospital Corneal Retrieval Programme (HCRP) this year.
The development comes as the eye bank continues to handle a high volume of corneal transplants. In 2025, it collected 2,167 corneas and performed transplants on 1,775 corneal-blind patients. The centre has performed more than 1,300 corneal transplants annually for four consecutive years.
Of the 2,167 corneas collected in 2025, 1,775 (81.9%) were retrieved through the HCRP. The hospital-based programme enables eye-bank counsellors and technicians to identify potential donors, counsel bereaved families and retrieve corneas at hospitals.
Over the past 61 years, the eye bank has collected more than 38,000 corneas and visually rehabilitated over 28,000 people through corneal transplantation. It has also trained more than 500 ophthalmologists in advanced corneal transplantation techniques.
The centre performed 631 optical keratoplasties in 2025. It has also transitioned to sutureless Descemet Membrane Endothelial Keratoplasty (DMEK), a technique in which only the functional endothelial membrane is transplanted in suitable patients with endothelial dysfunction, potentially allowing faster visual rehabilitation.
The centre highlighted its work at Tuesday’s 41st National Eye Donation Fortnight programme at AIIMS, including a fully online death-notification system to enable faster contact with bereaved families and an online eye-donation pledge system. Over the past year, 100 people pledged their eyes at eye bank.
The centre also supplied more than 4,652 vials of its indigenous corneal preservation medium ExStorSol to 130 eye banks across 24 states in 2025-26. A RayMed-supported project is facilitating procurement of corneal tissue from other eye banks for paediatric keratoplasty.
AIIMS has also entered a five-year partnership with Vision-Aid to establish 10 Integrated Vision Centres across Delhi-NCR and a dedicated Cerebral Visual Impairment Resource Centre for children. National Eye Bank, which received a National Award last year for its contribution to eye banking, also honoured donor families, hospitals, NGOs and partner eye banks at the event.
