Pledging your eyes takes one phone call, and then nothing visible happens for a very long time. That gap is where confidence tends to leak away. So this article follows the path a donated cornea actually takes through an eye bank in Karachi, using only what PEBS publishes about its own work and what a named medical authority says about the surgery at the end of it. Where the detail is not published, we say so instead of filling the space.
Only a small part of the eye is used
The first thing to clear up is the picture that the words bring to mind. The US National Eye Institute describes the cornea as the clear outer layer at the front of the eye, the part that helps the eye focus light so you can see clearly. On its page about corneal transplants, the Institute explains that when someone has severe damage to the cornea, doctors can replace the damaged part with healthy corneal tissue from a donor.
So a corneal transplant is a repair to a thin, clear window at the front of the eye. It is not the transfer of an eye, and it is not the transfer of sight itself. That distinction is worth holding on to, because it is the reason a pledge is a smaller thing than families fear and a bigger thing than they expect.
Where the eye bank came from
The PEBS history page states that the movement for eye donation began in Karachi in 1962 and that the first cornea grafting campaign was launched in 1968, supported by ophthalmologists, public figures, poets and writers. It records that Pakistan Eye Bank Society was formally established in 1973 and registered as a society in 1976, and that the first Cornea Grafting Week in the world was organised in 1975, during which 105 corneally blind patients received transplants. The same page records that a PEBS Eye Bank and Cornea Lab was inaugurated in 2019.
PEBS states on its home page that its international partnerships include a collaboration with Eversight USA, alongside Rotary Club Heidelberg, Sri Lankan eye banks, the Cowasjee Foundation and Women’s Team LA. Those are the hospital’s own published statements about its partners rather than claims made here on its behalf.
What the eye bank does, in the hospital’s own words
The Eye Bank and Cornea Lab page describes the unit as the institution the society was founded to build, and sets out its work in one sentence. It receives, evaluates and preserves donated corneas, from local donors and from partners abroad, and supplies them to surgeons for sight restoring corneal transplants.
Three verbs, in order. Receive. Evaluate. Preserve. Then the tissue leaves the lab and goes to a surgeon.
What the page does not publish is the technical detail inside those three verbs. It does not state the criteria used to accept or decline a cornea, the medium it is stored in, how long it can be held, or what testing is done before release. Every eye bank in the world has answers to those questions, and PEBS will have them too, but they are not on the site and we have not been given them. So they are not in this article. If you want that level of detail before you pledge, ask for it on the phone and expect a straight answer.
The numbers PEBS publishes
The eye donation page carries the running totals for the movement. It states more than 30,000 eyes pledged across Pakistan, more than 16,000 corneal grafts, more than 300 corneas received locally and more than 150 corneas received and operated through APPNA. The Eye Bank and Cornea Lab page repeats the graft and pledge figures and adds the 1975 Cornea Grafting Week.
Those are the hospital’s own published totals, presented here as its own claims rather than as audited statistics. What they tell you is the shape of the thing. Pledges are counted in tens of thousands, corneas received locally in hundreds. The distance between those two numbers is the honest problem an eye bank in Karachi lives with, and it is not solved by more pledges alone. It is solved by families remembering the pledge at the moment it matters.
What happens at the other end
The National Eye Institute describes two shapes of the operation. Where scarring or damage affects the whole cornea, surgeons can perform a full thickness transplant, called a penetrating keratoplasty. Where only part of the cornea is damaged, they can perform a partial thickness transplant, called a lamellar keratoplasty. The Institute notes that corneal transplant is outpatient surgery, that a follow up appointment is needed the day after, and that depending on the type of transplant, full recovery can take up to a year.
It is also honest about risk. The Institute states that like any surgery a corneal transplant has risks, the major one being tissue rejection, where the body treats the new cornea as a foreign object. It lists infection, bleeding, retinal detachment and glaucoma among other possible problems, and says that a patient with rejection or other severe trouble may need another transplant.
PEBS’s own hospital page lists corneal transplantation among the surgeries performed by its Eye Unit. Nothing in this article should be read as a promise about any individual outcome, because nobody can make that promise, and any surgeon who does is one to walk away from.
No cornea is bought and no cornea is sold
The suspicion that attaches itself to the words eye bank is money, and it deserves a direct answer. The Eye Bank and Cornea Lab page states that a corneal graft costs around PKR 200,000 to fund, and that donors make complete grafts possible for patients who could never afford them.
Read that carefully. It is the cost of funding an operation, covered by a financial donor so that a poor patient pays nothing. It is not a price paid for tissue. A cornea donor’s family is not compensated, a cornea is not purchased, and a place in a queue is not for sale. A donor cannot name or choose the patient who receives a graft. There is no separate queue for patients funded by different donors, and which patient receives a cornea is a clinical decision about need and suitability. Money does not buy tissue and it does not buy priority. If anyone ever suggests otherwise to you in the name of this hospital or any other, treat it as a warning and report it.
How to pledge, and the questions people actually ask
The eye donation page keeps this simple. Pledging costs nothing, and you call the helpline on 021-36908053 or use the contact page, and the team records the pledge and answers questions. The page says plainly that religious and family concerns are among the questions they are always happy to discuss, which is the right thing for it to say, because those are the real questions and they are almost never asked out loud.
The page also states that a single pledge can give two people the gift of sight, and that corneas are processed at the PEBS Eye Bank and Cornea Lab and grafted free of cost for patients who cannot afford surgery.
If you would rather support the work with money than with a pledge, or in addition to one, the donate page lists the current routes. We do not print bank details in blog posts. Take them from the hospital’s own page or confirm them by phone before you transfer anything, on any charity’s website, including this one.
The short version
An eye bank in Karachi is not a mysterious place. It receives a gift, checks it, keeps it safe and hands it to a surgeon, and somewhere at the end of that chain a person who had stopped expecting anything gets a clear window back. The parts of the process PEBS publishes are in this article. The parts it does not publish are marked as missing rather than guessed at. If corneal disease is a live question in your family right now, speak to an eye specialist about your own eyes and call PEBS Hospital on 021-36908053 to ask about an assessment.
Have a question about your eyes?
PEBS Hospital in North Karachi can examine you and explain your options. Call the helpline on 021-36908053, or send a message and the team will reply.
This article is general information and does not replace an examination by an eye doctor.
