As some of you will know my wife has been waiting sixteen months for a replacement corneal transplant. Well in three days time the wait will be over and have to be at the hospital for 07:30 am on Thursday ready for the op.
While we have been waiting we have been supported by the UK Keratoconus Self Help and Support Association (UKKC) via its forum. I also received from them information about how many people were on the waiting list in the UK for a replacement cornea (over 3,000) and how short of donor eyes the Transplant service were. The hospital treating my wife claimed that towrds the end of 2010 and in the early part of this year the supply of donor eyes had dried up completely. However the Private Sector had no problem getting donor eyes and their waiting list was about 2 weeks mostly because the pre op tests took that long. I made enquiries about where the eyes were coming from. It turned out that most of them came from abroad where donor organs are obtained very differently from in the UK. The largest source seemed to be the USA who were charging little more than the cost of packaging the eyes and flying them across the Atlantic.
This is made possible because unlike many organs that have to be used withing hours of the donor dying, eyes can be safely stored for up to 28 days. This makes it practical to ship them right round the world. I was also told that hearts, lungs and livers were routinely shared across the EEC as there is a database that contains all the people requiring transplants and all the member countries have access to it and the donated organ goes to the best match. However that does not include eyes.
I asked my MP (Ed Balls) if this was Government policy or was there some other reason. He refferred me to the Blood Trnasfusion and Organ Transplant service who are responsible for harvesting donor organs and distributing them to the waiting hospitals. I received a letter from Lynda Hamlyn the Chief Executive of NHS Blood and Transplant in it she says;
"The current average waiting time for a cornea is two months and with the increasing level of cornea donation in UK, the waiting time is continuing to reduce. There may be occasions when there is a requirement for a particular tissue type or age match between donor and recipient and these cases may need a special search and result in a longer waiting time."
When I showed the letter to the Eye Clinic at my Wife's hospital there was total disbelief as what it was claiming bore no resemblence to the number of eyes available to the Trust here in Leeds. I have been told to show the letter to the Consultant on Thursday to see what he has to say about it - watch this space for his reply.
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