ILOILO City — Eight patients have regained the chance to see through successful corneal transplants at the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC), marking a major advance in eye care in the region but also exposing a critical obstacle to saving more people’s vision — the shortage of donated human corneas.
WVMC performed five successful corneal transplant surgeries in 2025 and three more from January to June 2026 following its partnership with the Eye Bank of the Philippines and the establishment of a Tissue Retrieval Center at the government hospital in Mandurriao district.
The development has strengthened Western Visayas’ capacity to provide sight-restoring surgery closer to home while reducing its longstanding dependence on donor tissues sourced from Manila.
But Dr. Mary Katherine Francia, head of WVMC’s Department of Ophthalmology, stressed that the success of the program ultimately depends on families willing to donate the corneas of deceased loved ones.
“We depend entirely on human generosity,” Francia said.
Corneal transplant surgery has been performed in Iloilo for about 15 years, but the absence of a local tissue retrieval facility previously limited the number of procedures that could be undertaken.
“We started doing transplants about 15 years ago, but we didn’t have a local tissue retrieval center back then,” Francia explained.
“We had a handful of patients, but we relied entirely on donor tissue reserved and shipped from the eye bank in Manila,” she said.
The already limited supply worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic as mandatory cremations significantly reduced the availability of donated eye tissues.
“Starting with the pandemic, tissue donations seemed to stop because the deceased were being cremated. As a result, donor tissue became scarce again,” she said.
“You can’t perform a transplant without tissue or without donors because artificial options aren’t viable here yet — I mean, artificial corneas are available abroad, but here in our country, they are not yet available,” Francia said.
To address the problem, WVMC signed a memorandum of agreement with the Eye Bank of the Philippines in 2024, paving the way for the establishment of its own Tissue Retrieval Center.
The facility enables trained medical teams to retrieve donated eye tissues locally instead of depending solely on tissues sourced elsewhere.
“Having a tissue retrieval center right here in areas like Iloilo, Ilocos, or Mindanao means local residents can encourage people in their own communities to donate corneas. You can only donate after you die,” Francia said.
Under the arrangement, when a participating local institution successfully retrieves a pair of donated eyes, one cornea is reserved for a patient on that institution’s local waiting list while the other enters the national donor pool.
The system recently came into play when the family of a comatose woman at Iloilo Doctors’ Hospital agreed to donate her eyes. A WVMC retrieval team harvested the tissues for processing.
Corneal retrieval, however, is highly time-sensitive.
“For those who are willing to donate, the eye can still be harvested up to 12 hours after death,” Francia said.
After retrieval, the donated eyes are placed in a special transport medium and flown to the Eye Bank in Manila, where they undergo screening for infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, as well as tests for cell density, clarity and overall tissue quality.
“The donor eyes are packed in a transport medium, taken to the airport, and brought to the eye bank in Manila, where processing takes place to make sure the eye is healthy,” Francia stressed.
“If it passes all the checkpoints at the eye bank, the institution that provided the donation — for example, us, when we sent tissue there — gets one of those two eyes reserved for us… for our patients, because every institution registers on a waitlist at the eye bank,” Francia explained.
“This policy is meant to encourage cornea harvesting: out of the two donated eyes, one will definitely go to your institution, while the other goes to the general waitlist pool for the next patient in line,” she added.
A corneal transplant replaces damaged or scarred corneal tissue with healthy tissue from a donor. The cornea is the transparent, dome-shaped outer layer at the front of the eye that allows light to enter and provides much of the eye’s focusing power.
Disease, infection or physical injury can scar or cloud the cornea, blocking light and resulting in severe visual impairment or blindness.
“Think of it like replacing a damaged spare part or vulcanizing a punctured tire,” Francia said.
“If there is a white scar in the middle of the cornea, we cut out that scarred circle and replace it with a clear donor cornea so light can pass through cleanly again,” she added.
A routine procedure takes about an hour, although cases involving serious traumatic injuries may require more extensive surgery.
Francia cited one patient whose cornea became scarred and thinned after a foreign object injured the eye.
“She couldn’t see because a scar formed. Her cornea turned white and thinned out in the center, so we performed a corneal transplant, and it cleared up,” she said.
“If there is a scar in the middle, you cut out that circular section and replace it with a new cornea so it becomes clear and transparent again. In a simple analogy, if there’s a hole, you patch it up as if you were vulcanizing a tire,” she added.
WVMC’s Tissue Retrieval Center now provides an important pathway to corneal transplantation for patients across Western Visayas, including Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan, Antique and Guimaras.
With the medical capability now in place, Francia said expanding the program hinges on public willingness to donate.
“A single decision made during a family’s hardest hour can transform a life forever. We humbly appeal to bereaved families across the region to consider corneal donation — because even in grief, you have the power to give someone a second chance to see the world,” she said./PN
