Corneas From Sri Lanka’s Dead Enable 25,000 to See

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A blind man from Japan flew to Sri Lanka recently and saw a young woman through the eyes of her dead grandmother.

Horikoshi Masao, 60, a technician in a Japanese automobile factory, is one of 25,000 people in different parts of the world whose sight has been restored by corneal grafting with eyes from Sri Lanka.

Masao, a grandfather, came to the Indian Ocean island to participate in celebrations organized by the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society to mark the giving of the 25,000th eye.

The society’s president, Dr. Hudson Silva, said Sri Lanka is the only country in the world giving to other countries corneas of dead people to be grafted onto the eyes of the blind.

Given to 57 Countries

Silva, who started the humanitarian scheme, said the eyes have been given to 57 countries over the last 25 years. “Our eyes have gone to so many countries to illuminate the world,” the eye surgeon said.

Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa was the chief guest at the celebrations to mark the event.

Premadasa said that at Silva’s request he had carried eyes to several countries on his official tours as prime minister before he became president early this year.

“I have taken eyes to various countries, and I know how much the people in those countries appreciate it,” he said.

Masao’s defective eyes had been grafted three years ago with the corneas of a 65-year-old Sri Lankan woman named Aslin Nona three days after she died.

Went to See Her Family

During his visit to the island, Masao drove to Aslin Nona’s home at Heriyantuduwe in the suburbs of Colombo to see her family.

“I am very happy to see you, I have always wanted to see all of you with these eyes,” he told Aslin Nona’s children and grandchildren.

Her granddaughter, Karunaseeli, 23, showed Masao pictures of Aslin Nona in the family album. “I am very happy to see her,” he said.

“This is like as if our grandmother has returned home,” said Tillekeratne, one of Aslin Nona’s grandsons.

The Eye Donation Society formed by Silva started donating eyes to local hospitals for grafting in 1961.

“Before we started this scheme, the eyes were obtained from people sent to the gallows. But, when in 1956 the government stopped executions, the flow of eyes to the hospitals dried up,” he said.

Three years after the society started collecting corneas of dead people, there was an excess over the number required by the local hospitals, he said.

“We then started donating the excess eyes to foreign countries. The first batch of six eyes was sent to Singapore on the full-moon day of the month of May, 1964.” Silva said.

He said giving the eyes on full-moon day was significant because the day is sacred to Buddhists, who form 70% of Sri Lanka’s 16 million people.

The Eye Donation Society has a list of more than 550,000 people, mostly Buddhists, who have signed forms offering their corneas for grafting after death.