On January 21, 2017, Fortis Organ Retrieval &Transplant (FORT) with MOHAN Foundation under the aegis of NOTTO organized a workshop on, “revisiting contraindications to cornea donation,” at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram. National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Eye Bank Association of India (EBAI), SightLife and Dr Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital were the other co organizers.

The objective of the workshop was to review the contraindications as laid down in Standards of Eye Banking in India by National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB), Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. It was felt that 80% of the time there were contraindications to cornea donation. There were times when the organs were retrieved but the experts refused corneas. The workshop aimed at bringing together all the stakeholders involved at various levels of eye care services, governmental & non-governmental organizations on a common platform to discuss, review and reach a consensus for updation of the module and submit it to NPCB.

Dr. Promilla Gupta, DDG, NPCB, MoHFW was the patron and chief guest. Dr. Radhika Tandon, President EBAI, Co-chair National Eye Bank & Professor of Ophthalmology, AIIMS led the advisory committee.

The workshop addressed the following areas:

1. Overview & comparison of existing guidelines
2. Review of current contraindications like age limit, sepsis, malignancies, poisoning, snake bite, drowning, HBV, HCV, HIV and others

At the end of the workshop there was panel discussion on," current issues in cornea donation." The participants included: Dr. Ritu Arora (Prof & MD, Guru Nanak Eye Centre), - Dr. Vimal Bhandari (Director, NOTTO), - Dr. Harsha Jauhari (Technical Advisor, NOTTO), - Dr. Umang Mathur (MD, Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital), Mr. Atul Kapoor (Vice President Asia, SightLife), Ms Pallavi Kumar (Executive Director, MOHAN Foundation, Delhi-NCR) and Ms Preeti Monga (Silver Linings, New Delhi). Dr. Radhika Tandon and Dr. Avnish Seth were the moderators.

All the panelists agreed on the following recommendations:

• No age limit to eye donation
• Malignancies not a contraindication except haematological and ocular
• Sepsis: positive blood culture or diagnosis of septicaemia in death certificate
• Retrieval time for corneas should be increased from 6 hours to 10 hours depending on the circumstances of death and interim means of storage of the body.

The summary of recommendations would be uploaded on website of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare for comments of experts from the rest of the country.

60-65 participants attended the workshop.