LAUSR

Eye banking activities stopped and there was an acute demand and supply mismatch due to severe reduction in donor tissues. This was also, in part, due to the fact that there was complete lack of any strategy or guidelines for tissue harvesting, handling, processing, and actual transplantation. History of medicine shows numerous examples of when mankind was faced with unprecedented situations, with no protocol or guidelines in place to tackle the challenge. The medical fraternity has always found timely solutions to such problems. India was labelled as “almost sufficient” category in a recent survey, with the second highest number of corneal collection and utilization after USA,[1] and the Eye Banking Association of India (EBAI) showed positive trends until the pandemic hit. A rational triaging of recipient‐patients, based on priority stratification with respect to their visual and social needs, was advocated and alternative modes of prolonged donor cornea preservation were explored.