NEW DELHI: India has come a long way in corneal transplantation, with advanced surgical techniques, trained specialists and a growing network of eye banks. Yet, for thousands of people living with corneal blindness, the biggest hurdle remains outside the operating theatre — finding a suitable donor cornea in time.
Experts at Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital said India currently performs only about 25,000–30,000 corneal transplants a year, against an estimated annual requirement of around 1 lakh or more, depending on the definition of transplantable corneal blindness and the tissue utilisation rate.
The country therefore continues to meet only a fraction of its potential need.
The problem is not unique to India. Across the world, access to transplantation remains highly unequal, with shortages of donated tissues, inadequate infrastructure and uneven access to specialised services continuing to limit treatment.
The World Health Organisation has highlighted major disparities in transplantation capacity between countries and regions and, in 2024, called for stronger national systems to improve donation and equitable access.
Unlike some forms of blindness that can be treated with medicines, glasses or surgery, severe corneal damage can leave transplantation as the principal option for restoring vision. The cornea — the transparent front layer of the eye — plays a critical role in focusing light. Scarring caused by infections, trauma and other corneal diseases can severely impair this function.
For India, the challenge is particularly significant because the country has the clinical expertise to perform substantially more procedures than the current availability of donor tissue permits.
Padma Shri Prof Dr Jeevan Titiyal, Regional Head–Clinical Services, Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital, said the country’s focus must now extend beyond encouraging people to pledge their eyes.
“Corneal blindness is among the significant causes of vision loss that can potentially be treated through transplantation, yet thousands of patients continue to face a long and uncertain wait for suitable donor tissue. India has the surgical expertise and increasingly advanced techniques to perform corneal transplantation, but the availability of suitable, high-quality donor tissue remains a major constraint. The conversation therefore needs to move beyond simply asking people to pledge their eyes. We need greater awareness among families about making a timely decision after death, stronger hospital-based retrieval systems, efficient eye-bank networks and better coordination across the entire donor-to-recipient pathway.”
The scale of the problem becomes clearer when donation figures are examined alongside utilisation. In 2023-24, more than 49,000 corneas were reportedly retrieved, but only about 27,394 were considered suitable for transplantation, according to various reports.
The government’s more recent data, however, point to an increase in cornea collection. The number of donated eyes collected rose from 62,370 in 2022-23 to 66,434 in 2023-24 and 69,848 in 2024-25, while 396 eye banks were reported to be functional across the country in March 2026.
This rise is encouraging, but retrieval alone does not guarantee that a cornea will reach a patient. The tissue must be retrieved promptly, evaluated for quality and safety, processed, stored and allocated efficiently. A delay at any stage can reduce the likelihood of successful utilisation.
This makes the hospital’s cornea retrieval programme and eye bank network crucial links in the chain. Families need to know that the decision to donate must be followed by timely communication with an eye bank after death. Equally important is ensuring that hospitals and eye banks have trained personnel and systems capable of responding quickly.
India has also been trying to remove regulatory and infrastructure barriers. In November 2025, the government amended the transplantation rules and removed the mandatory requirement for clinical specular equipment in corneal transplantation centres, with the stated objective of streamlining services and widening access to corneal transplantation.
At the global level, the broader picture is equally sobering. WHO estimates that at least 2.2 billion people worldwide have near or distance vision impairment, with at least 1 billion cases preventable or yet to be addressed.
While refractive errors and cataracts remain the leading causes, corneal disease continues to contribute substantially to avoidable vision loss, particularly in settings where access to timely eye care is limited.
The evolution of corneal surgery has meanwhile made transplantation more precise. Instead of replacing the entire cornea in every patient, surgeons can increasingly replace only the diseased layer in appropriately selected cases. This has opened the door to faster visual recovery and more targeted treatment.
Dr Prabjot Kaur, Senior Consultant Ophthalmologist, Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital, said, “Advances in corneal surgery now allow us to treat specific layers of the cornea, offering more targeted treatment and faster visual rehabilitation for appropriately selected patients. However, these advances can translate into better outcomes only when suitable donor tissue is available.”
Dr Titiyal called for closing India’s corneal transplantation gap. He said this will require action across the entire ecosystem. From creating greater awareness and strengthening timely retrieval to improving eye-bank infrastructure and ensuring better utilisation of available tissue, every link in the journey must work together to help more patients access the treatment they need, he emphasised.
