Sri Lanka donates eyes to the world (AP)

Your Health Matters

In this Nov. 4, 2011 photo, people wait in a line to get their eyes examined as a staffer, foreground, examines the eye of a cataract patient at the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The gift of sight has become an unwritten symbol of Sri Lanka's pride and culture. Despite being a poor island nation of about 20 million people that has recently emerged from a quarter century of civil war, the country is among the world's largest cornea providers, sending more than 60,000 eyes to 57 nations since its first donation nearly 50 years ago, according to the nonprofit Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society. Nearly 900,000 people have also signed up to give their eyes in death through the Eye Donation Society's longstanding eye bank. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)AP – At 10:25 a.m., a dark brown eye was removed from a man whose lids had closed for the last time. Five hours later, the orb was staring up at the ceiling from a stainless steel tray in an operating room with two blind patients — both waiting to give it a second life.

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