W

est Java needs to intensify its province-wide eyeball donation campaign to help more patients with treatable blindness causing conditions, an official has said.

West Java Eye Bank head Netty Heryawan said that his office was still facing a number of obstacles in finding local donors, mainly due to lack of knowledge among residents.

Many, she continued, thought that donating organs and body parts after death was against their religion.

'We need to educate the people on the benefits of donating their corneas. From the religious perspective, it is indeed a noble way to help others,' Netty said.

Another problem is that not everyone can donate his or her corneas after death, Cicendo Eye Hospital director Hikmat Wangsaatmadja said.

People who have ever undergone cataract surgery or suffered from diseases such as eye infections, glaucoma, cytomegalovirus, meningitis, rabies, hepatitis B and C and HIV/AIDS, are not eligible to be donors.

'Besides, there must be an agreement with the family allowing the person to donate his or her corneas after passing away,' Hikmat said after the celebration of the hospital's 105th anniversary in Bandung on Friday.

According to the Health Ministry, around 1.5 percent of the Indonesian population suffers from blindness in both eyes, with the majority suffering from cataracts and glaucoma.

'Blindness caused by cataracts can be corrected through a corneal transplant. Thus, we need donated corneas,' Hikmat said.

'Let's say the population is 220 million, meaning there are around 3.3 million of people suffering from blindness. This is no longer a health issue. This is a social issue that has to be tackled immediately.'

Hikmat added that of the 20 corneal transplants performed by the Cicendo hospital in 2013, only two of them were from local donors.

'The remaining surgeries used donated corneas from other countries,' he said, adding that cornea donation was common practice in countries like Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and the United States.

He said that using corneas donated by local donors would be cheaper than foreign donations as patients would not have to pay for the transportation cost.

Hikmat said that one of his patients spent Rp 17 million (US$1,395) to get the corneas shipped from the Philippines.

Indonesia itself has had an eye bank since the 1980s, but few have donated eyeballs.

The Indonesian Ophthalmologist Association (Perdami) previously reported that the last several years the Indonesian Eye Bank had received just 108 locally donated corneal tissues.

'Nationally, there are currently 300 patients waiting to get a corneal transplant,' Hikmat said, adding that he had signed up as a cornea donor.