Appeal for more eye tissue donors

A service pioneered in the South East which can restore the vision of patients is to be expanded.

The eye bank at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, West Sussex, supplies a quarter of all corneas provided nationwide.

The hospital is one of eight in the UK designated as an Eye Retrieval Centre.

An appeal has now been launched for more people to come forward and donate eye tissue to enable more cornea transplants to be carried out.

The Eye Retrieval Centres are funded by UK Transplant, an NHS body responsible for matching and allocating corneas and other organs for transplant.

More than 2,500 cornea transplants were carried out in the UK last year, the most in six years.