Awareness on eye donation among medical and nonmedical students: A cross-sectional comparative study

Background: Globally, there are 45 million blind people with an annual increase of 1–2 million. Corneal blindness is the 4th leading cause of blindness. The demand for donor's eyes is much higher than the number of donor's eyes collected, and the number of corneal transplants done is insufficient. One of the reasons for reduced eye donation is the lack of awareness of the process of eye donation and corneal transplantation. Materials and Methods: A comparative, questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the awareness on eye donation among medical and nonmedical students of Puducherry. The participants were given a predesigned and structured questionnaire which included 25 questions after informed consent was obtained from them. The results were derived through the statistical analysis. Results: The primary source of awareness for both groups was mass media. About 90.3% of medical and 41.9% of the nonmedical students knew that consent for eye donation is given by the donor while alive (P < 0.000), also that the first-degree relatives have the right to give consent for the dead was 88.2% and 49.5% among medical and nonmedical students, respectively (P < 0.000). Three-fourths of medical and half the nonmedical students knew that corneal donation could not cure all types of blindness. Around 87.1% of medical and 36.6% of nonmedical students were aware that eyes with corneal diseases could not be donated. Conclusion: The present study showed that participants from both groups were aware of eye donation, but the awareness among nonmedical students was not adequate. This study also shows that mass media was the most common source of awareness among the students, which could be used to create further awareness among the students.