Corneal TransplantationThe Gift of Sight Donate

Hoshiarpur Mid Town × Plano Metro · since 2018

A clouded cornea is blindness. Replacing it takes an hour.

We pay for corneal transplants in northern India — the surgery, the cornea and the medicines. The patient pays nothing at all.

Sponsor a transplant — $200 How the project works

Left to right, this picture clears. That is the whole operation: light scattered by a clouded cornea, then a donated graft, then sight.

The project in four numbers

448Latest in the seriesTransplants are numbered as they are performed. This is the most recent the clubs have recorded.
2018Running sinceBegun in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, and now reaching seven states.
$200Cost of oneOr ₹15,000. Covers the operation, the donated cornea and the medicines afterwards.
97%Restore visionCorneal transplantation is among the most reliable operations in medicine.

The cornea is the clear window at the front of the eye

When it clouds or scars — from injury, infection, malnutrition or a birth defect — light stops reaching the retina and vision goes. India has an estimated 1.2 million people who are corneal blind, and 25,000 to 30,000 more join them every year.

Corneal transplantation is the only treatment. It works in more than 97 percent of cases. The obstacle is not medicine; it is that a family earning a daily wage cannot pay for surgery, and that donated corneas are scarce. This project removes the first obstacle entirely and campaigns on the second.

How a transplant happens

  1. A patient is identified

    Through Rotary clubs, partner hospitals and word of mouth across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir.

  2. An eye bank supplies the cornea

    Recovered within hours of a donor’s death and kept viable in preservation medium. Most transplants happen within a week of recovery.

  3. A partner hospital operates

    Guru Ka Langar Eye Hospital in Chandigarh, Dr. Shakeen’s Eye & Dental Hospital in Amritsar and others, under a signed MOU. Free of cost.

  4. The patient is followed up

    Post-operative checks confirm the graft has taken and vision has returned. Every case is recorded against the project’s numbered series.

The register

Every transplant is numbered

The clubs keep a running series. Patients are not named here — the surgeon, the hospital and the number are what make an account checkable.

448Mohali · Tricity Eye HospitalA 28-year-old man from Ferozepur districtDr. Rohit Gupta 447Amritsar · Dr. Shakeen’s Eye & DentalA 50-year-old man from Amritsar · 5 September 2024Dr. Shakeen Singh 388Jalandhar · Arora Eye HospitalA 33-year-old man from Tarn TaranDr. Amandeep Singh Arora

Donate

Two hundred dollars is one person’s sight, returned to them for the rest of their life.

The operation, the donated cornea and every medicine afterwards. The patient is charged nothing at any stage.

Sponsor a transplant