Cornea transplants may soon be available in Oman

The Tej Kohli Cornea Institute (TKCI), funded by the Tej Kohli Foundation, recently teamed up with Omani health officials with the goal of establishing cornea transplant services across the country.

While blindness from cataract and trachoma is a major health issue throughout Oman, corneal transplantations and eye donation services aren't available locally. This leads patients to travel to other countries like the U.S. or Iran, despite the fact that Oman's capital has qualified doctors to do the surgical procedure.

"The instruments and equipment are excellent in Al Nadha Eye Hospital in Muscat: the hospital had trained cornea transplant surgeons and there was no dearth of patients, but the one stumbling block was availability of corneal tissue," Virender Sangwan, director of the Center for Ocular Regeneration and Srujana Center of Innovation at LV Prasad Eye Institute in India, said. "Currently, we are working with the Ministry of Health to evolve a master plan to restart corneal transplantation in this amazing country."

The cornea transplant services in Oman would be modeled after those developed at LV Prasad Eye Institute by TCKI this past December.

"The Tej Kohli Foundation has long been committed to the eradication of blindness with our 2030 plan for eradicating corneal blindness in India, and we now have the technology and expertise from the TKCI to allow this goal to be taken up by other countries," Tej Kohli Foundation Founder Tej Kohli said.