The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Patna, will come up with state-of-the-art eye bank and kidney transplant facilities, the first of their kind in the eastern region of the country.

Senior officials from AIIMS Patna and Hyderabad-based LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) on Tuesday to establish an eye bank.

“A cornea transplant centre was set up here after registration from the State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO), Bihar, when I joined here in 2022. However, few corneal transplants could be done till date due to dependency on other eye banks for getting cornea from donors. With the MoU, an eye bank will be functional at our premises soon,” AIIMS Patna executive director Gopal Krushna Pal said.

AIIMS Patna superintendent Anup Kumar and ophthalmology department head Amit Raj were present on the occasion. The move is expected to help the corneal blind people of Bihar, who are forced to go to other states to undergo transplants.

The LVPEI has established eye banks at AIIMS Rishikesh, the Institute of Medical Sciences — Banaras Hindu University, the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology at the Government Medical College in Guwahati in the first phase of its collaborations. It has further selected AIIMS Patna and Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi, for such facilities in the second phase.

Similarly, AIIMS Patna has received approval under the Transplant of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 by the Bihar government to roll out a kidney transplant facility. It is expected to start functioning from next month (August).

“A team of seven doctors from different specialities of the institute here has completed its formal short-term training at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. All the crucial departments for a kidney transplant are fully functional and equipped,” Pal said.

AIIMS Patna urology department head Kamlesh Gunjan said that renal transplants, in the beginning, would be done only when patients get a kidney from a blood-related donor, but the institute would start transplants in which kidneys would be harvested from brain dead persons with the consent of their families.

“We have five dialysis patients awaiting kidney transplants,” Gunjan said.

The upcoming kidney transplant facility at AIIMS Patna is expected to benefit patients from Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Odisha, the Northeast and Uttar Pradesh. They have to go to AIIMS Delhi and PGIMER Chandigarh to access such facilities.

“The kidney transplant services at our institute will not only reduce the load of patients on other super speciality centres but would also be cheaper. A kidney transplant would cost around ₹3 lakh at AIIMS Patna, including the cost of medicines and hospitalisation of the donor and recipient, in comparison to ₹ 8 to 10 lakh at private hospitals,” Pal said.