Role of ‘Community Grief Counsellors’ in Enhancing Eye Donations

Abstract

Introduction: Corneal blindness remains a major public health concern, with a persistent shortage of donor corneas despite awareness initiatives. Ambulance drivers and freezer box service providers, due to their close interaction with bereaved families, may influence eye donation decisions; however, their knowledge, attitude, and practices toward eye donation remain underexplored.

Objective: To understand the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) towards eye donation among ambulance workers and freezer box service providers.

Methodology: A validated questionnaire containing 19 questions on knowledge, six on attitude and seven on practice patterns was administered to the study population and their responses were analysed.

Result: Mean age of the participants was 37.57 years. Among all, 69% of the study population had received at least secondary school education. The study participants had partial knowledge (mean score: 15), fair attitude (mean score: 5.8) and poor practise (mean score: 2.7) pattern towards eye donation. Using Dunn’s pairwise comparison test, it was observed that the attitude scores of freezer box workers were significantly lesser in comparison to ambulance drivers (p = 0.001) and owners (p = 0.017).

Conclusion: The study brought to light that active awareness campaigns are required in this cohort and there is considerable potential to improve eye donation if they partner with local eye banks.