Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Eye donation gets an ace champion

— Photo: S. R. Raghunathan

UN Ambassador for Peace Vijay Amritraj releasing an awareness music CD on eye donation in Chennai on Tuesday. Film director Vasanth (second from right) and director of Rajan Eye Care Hospital, Mohan Rajan (left), are in the picture.

CHENNAI: Awareness messages get a new high with celebrity endorsements. This time around, the message of eye donation was driven home by tennis ace and UN Ambassador for Peace Vijay Amritraj.

A couple of autograph hunters scrambled and the rest craned their necks to have a better look at the tennis legend, who was present at an eye donation awareness programme, flanked by a couple of players of Chennai Open, here on Tuesday.

Mr. Amritraj launched a three-minute CD ‘You are the light’ containing a song that stresses the importance of eye donation. “Every person’s eye can light the lives of two people. By donating the eyes of our loved ones, we see them live through the eyes of someone else. Eye donation should be made a norm through such awareness campaigns,” he said.

Organised by the Rajan Eye Care Hospital, Rotary Rajan Eye Bank and Rotary Club of Madras T. Nagar on Monday, the programme saw 10 persons pledging to donate their eyes. Adding colour to the event was the presence of film director Vasanth, who called for philanthropic support to encourage voluntary organisations working for the cause. He said awareness campaigns must be conducted on a regular basis in rural areas to get the message across to the masses. Presiding over the event, Rajan Eye Care Hospital Director Mohan Rajan said over 1.5 million people suffer from various types of corneal blindness and over half the victims are aged below 12. The number of corneal transplants has doubled from 25,000 in 2005 to 50,000 in 2008 but yet, the demand was higher than the supply. Director of Rotary Rajan Eye Bank Sujatha Mohan and President of Rotary Club of Madras T. Nagar M. P. Krishnan spoke.

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