This couple of Haridwar in mid 40s is engaged in spreading awareness amongst the people to donate their eyes after death and see for more lifetimes through others.
Pledged from thousands of people to donate their eyes, they have helped nearly ten people get vision by coordinating with the donors including two of their own family members. Apart from getting donors, they have also helped many schoolchildren realise the weakening of their eyesight when their parents failed to recognise it in their children and thus giving them a spectacle solution in the beginning before the vision gets worse.
As a volunteer with Jolly Grant eye bank, the couple has organised free eye check-up camps amongst various schools of the district. “Many a time, students do not tell their parents and we come to know through the check-up held in school. After preliminary check-up in school those needing more examination are called to the hospital for detailed check-up,” tells Neeraj Mallik.
Neha, his wife, 42 got into this passionate voluntary work for the society soon after her marriage in 1996. “There were lots of myths amongst people which needed to be broken,” tells Neha. “Many people thought eye donation was like blood donation so they were scared to pledge. With years of work, now we have reached the stage where people know the basics that the information of death must reach the hospital within an hour because the whole process of medical team reaching, operating and going back must be completed within six hours of the death of a person, she adds.
Telling about the mode of spreading awareness, Neeraj, a builder by profession who is into this noble task since 1988 when he was graduating, tells, “We ask the priests at get togethers on the thirteenth day or fourth day of a deceased of a family, to announce about the noble act. I personally visit people and tell them to pledge to donate their eyes. The myth that one would not get a pair of eyes in the next birth if the body is burnt without them, needs to be broken.”
Besides organising free eye camps with conjunction of Jolly Grant Hospital in rural areas is part of the couple s activity in the whole district. Generally four camps are held in a year in which free cataract operation and implantation of Intraocular lens is done for BPl persons.
Neeraj is the authorised volunteer of Jolly Grant eyebank.Our aim is to spread awareness so that we achieve 100 per cent eye donation in the district. 3,500 employees of BHEl have pledged to donate their eyes last year. Urban people are more aware but rural folks do not come forward. Need is to percolate in the villages and motivate them more to come forward in making announce ments of this noble job, says the couple duo.
In the eye camps organised in schools, like the recent one in class tenth of Delhi Public School, many students showed interest in knowing about eye donation, says Neha.
More and more schools if take interest in the visionary process can lead to curing blindness at early stages and make the world of blinds a colorful one by pledging to donate.