U’khand: Youngest Eye Donor Goes Unsung, Plan To Name Eye Bank After Him Didn’t Materialise

Dehradun: Parents of a seven-day-old infant donated his eyes immediately after his death due to a respiratory problem to light up the lives of two blind children in 2007, but the child’s contribution to the country’s fight against corneal blindness has gone unsung.
Sixteen years have passed since Arjun from hill state Uttarakhand became probably the youngest organ donor, but a proposal to name an eye bank after him did not see the light of day.
Former Uttarakhand governor K K Paul had given his consent to name a proposed eye bank at the Gandhi Shatabdi Eye Hospital in Dehradun after the child eight years ago. A letter sent by the then chief secretary Om Prakash to the Directorate General of Health in 2015 clearly states that the governor has given his consent to name the proposed eye bank at the hospital after Arjun.
There was a move a few years ago to name an eye bank in the state after Arjun but nothing came out of it, the child’s father Sandeep Chawla, who lives in Gadarpur in Udham Singh Nagar district, told PTI.
Uttarakhand has seen two governments and four chief ministers since but the proposed eye bank at the hospital has not come into existence, let alone been named after the infant, he added.
“Arjun was our first born. Losing him just a few days after his birth was extremely painful. But being actively involved in an eye donation campaign, we decided in that difficult hour to donate his eyes to someone who could not see,” Chawla said.
Soon after that Chawla received a call from the eye bank in Delhi to which he had donated his dead son’s eyes that they had been successfully transplanted, one each, to two blind children.
“It caught everyone’s attention as eye donation by as young an infant as Arjun was something unheard of then,” he said.
The Limca Book of Records and the India Book of Records also describe Arjun as the youngest eye donor, Chawla said. “Naming an eye bank after my son would have motivated people to donate their eyes. Actually, that was the idea behind having an eye bank named after Arjun,” he said. He produced a number of documents in which senior government functionaries and people’s representatives have recommended setting up an eye bank in the state and naming it after Arjun.
“However, all those documents are now buried in government files. Even Khatima Punjabi Sabha had taken up the matter with present Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami but he did not probably find it worthy of much attention,” Chawla said.
In fact, the move to name an eye bank after the infant eye donor began in 2010, he said.
Earlier, the plan was to set up the eye bank at Haldwani’s Sushila Tiwari Hospital but there were some technical glitches as the forest department was also involved and it was decided to name the proposed eye bank at the Gandhi Shatabdi Eye Hospital after him, Chawla said.
However, the proposed eye bank at the hospital is yet to be set up and named after Arjun, he stressed.
When contacted, Chief Medical Superintendent of Coronation Hospital Shikha Jangpangi admitted that there is no eye bank yet at the Gandhi Shatabdi Eye Hospital.
“There was a move to set up an eye bank here but some teething problems arose. It does not fulfill the norms, the technical parameters set for having an eye bank,” she said. —PTI