The Singapore Eye Bank (SEB) has teamed up with Sri Lankan health authorities to set up an eye bank to procure cornea donations from that country.

The initial numbers from the National Eye Bank of Sri Lanka (NEBSL) have already proved promising, with 27 corneas donated since the start of operations on Monday.

To put this into perspective, the SEB averages 12 corneas a month despite being supported by three major hospitals (Tan Tock Seng, Singapore General Hospital and Changi General Hospital); the NEBSL currently procures its corneas from one (National Hospital of Sri Lanka).

The potential is enormous – estimated at 1,000 corneas a year – and NEBSL plans to expand its coverage to both north and south Colombo.

This is done in partnership with the National Eye Hospital of Colombo and the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health.

The NEBSL was funded by the Lee Foundation via the Asia Cornea Foundation and is modeled on the SEB.
 
Sri Lanka has been a major provider of corneas since the 1960s, with its primarily Buddhist population regarding cornea donation as a meritorious act.  However, a long-running civil war resulted in standards dropping, with eye banks finding it hard to get sufficient funding. 

The SEB aims to restore Sri Lanka as a major provider of corneas to Asian countries and attain international accreditation by Association of Eye Banks of Asia (AEBA) standards by the end of the year.

The SEB is also exploring the use of keyhole corneal transplant surgery to pre-cut donor tissue in Singapore before having it couriered to meet the needs of patients all over Asia.  Endothelial Keratoplasty, as the procedure is known, will help reduce the length of treatment from six months to two to three weeks.  There is also less risk of rejection and fewer side effects.

“If successful, SEB will be the first eye bank in Asia in collaboration with NEBSL to offer this high-tech procedure” said Professor Donald Tan, president of AEBA.

The official opening ceremony of the NEBSL will be held early next week, with Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the guest-of-honour.