As part of their week-long annual festival Atharva, which coincided with National Eye Donation Awareness fortnight, the interns at KEM Hospital successful managed to convince 350 individuals to pledge to donate their eyes.

Vishal Patil, one of the interning doctors who was participating in the festival said, \”While planning for the festival. we realised that it coincided with National eye donation awareness fortnight. We saw this as an opportunistic to get eye donors on board and spread awareness. 350 people have already pledged to donate their eyes and we expect more to sign up in the next two days.\”

Swapna Dahe, an intern doctor, who organised the eye donation drive said, ”Many under graduate and post graduate doctors have also pledged to donate their eyes. We have put posters in strategic locations inside the campus so that even patients and their relatives get to know about eye donations.”

Mumbai sees the highest number of eye donors in Maharashtra. Last year 5,587 eyes were donated in Munbai. Between April and November last year, 1,658 eyeballs were collected of which only 335 (20%) were used for transplants.