Chandigarh,25.08.25-On the occasion of the 40th National Eye donation fortnight celebrated every year at the PGIMER, Chandigarh from 25.8.2022 to 8.9.20222, a Media Conference was organised to disseminate awareness to the general public and to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of cornea.

At present, more than 1.3 million people are corneal blind in India and the current annual transplant number in the country varies from 25000- 30000. In PGIMER, around 2000 patients are waiting for their corneal transplantation but the hospital gets only about 500 corneas every year.

Prof. Surinder S. Pandav, Head, Deptt. of Ophthalmology, Prof Amit Gupta, Prof Chintan Malhotra, Dr Parul Chawla Gupta and senior members of Lions Club Central Chandigarh ( Mr Satish Bhaskar, Mr Sanjeev Sethi, Mr Harish Goyal, Mrs Soniya Arora, Mr Behl and Mr Sanjeev Gupta) engaged with the media during a press meet held in Advanced Eye Centre, PGI on the first day of the fortnight and apprised them of the various awareness activities to be conducted during the fortnight.

Following the media interaction, the eye donation fortnight was officially inaugurated in the Director’s Office by Prof Vivek Lal. He also handed over appreciation certificates to 3 donor families who had donated their family members eyes to eye bank PGI Chandigarh.