Role of 'Community Grief Counsellors' in Enhancing Eye Donations.

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.