A Study on Awareness, Knowledge and Willingness about Eye Donation among General Public in Southern India

The objective of the study was to assess the awareness, knowledge and willingness to donate eyes among general public in southern Indian. Visual impairments have physical, emotional, social, and economical consequences and are a crucial element influencing one's quality of life. A total of 1.285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide of which 39 million are categorised as blind. These figures are startling, given that 80 percent of known vision impairments are either treatable or preventable. Corneal transplants appear to be our best hope for resolving this problem; however, a global shortage of available donors continues to dampen efforts addressing this issue.

A cross sectional population-based survey used a semi structured questionnaire on awareness, knowledge and willingness for eye donation in states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Stratified multistage cluster random sampling method was used with a sample size of 867 adults >16 years based on, estimated awareness of cataract 70%, assuming an expected rate of 85%, design effect of 1.5, margin of error 4% with 95% confidence interval with 25% from urban areas and 75% from rural areas. Having heard of eye donation was defined as awareness and having knowledge of the ideal time to donate the eyes was considered as knowledge. A pilot study was conducted to validate the questions used in the main study. Statistical package SPSS (version 19) was used for analysis to calculate logistic regression and odds ratios for gender, age, education and urban-rural areas.

A total 782 (90.1%) out of 867 participants took part in the poll, with women making up 47.4% of the total. 603 participants (or 77.1%) knew about eye donation. 301 participants (38.5%) expressed a willingness to give eyeballs. The 297 participants (49.3%) knew when it was best to make a contribution after passing away. Public awareness of eye donation was high, but there was little public desire to donate eyes. To enhance voluntary eye donation and fight corneal blindness, it is necessary to identify the obstacles to donation.