World Bulletin/News Desk

Cornea transplantation has become wide widespread in Turkey, said Irfan Sencan, Director General of Health Services in Turkey on Wednesday.      

Speaking at a press conference, Sencan said it was a common problem throughout the world to obtain organs for transplantation adding that they had been carrying out a work on organ transplantation for nearly 8 years to improve the substructure in organ transplantation and encourage people to donate their organs.      

"Cornea transplantation from cadavers has increased by 30 percent in recent years in Turkey. However, there are patients who have been waiting for a long time for cornea transplantation. The number of corneas obtained in Turkey is not that ambitious. That is why we have imported 32 corneas from the US to make sure that our patients can see again. These corneas have been transplanted successfully to the patients with visual impairment," said Sencan.      

"We aim to obtain more corneas. We started a project at Ankara Hospital last year to increase the number of corneas we obtain every year. The number of corneas we have obtained has risen to 223 up from 60 since we started the project. We need 4,905 corneas for 4,430 patients," Sencan also said.