It’s been 37 years for a married couple in Thane Shripad Agashe and Pushpa Agashe leading an Eye Donation movement. And as result of their great efforts, till date 500 blind people could see the world and about 10,000 people have registered their names for Eye donation. Although we are living in 21st century, there is lot of misconceptions about Eye donation. The couple is inspiring people and making awareness in the society by conducting various activities and campaigns. The Agashe couple has been doing Eye donation awareness since 1981. For the last 37 years, they have taken more than 350 awareness lectures at various places and organized 125 exhibitions.
The couple bears all the cost required for Posters and banners in campaigns. Through such campaign they have made about 10,000 people from various parts of the state to fill form for eye donations. They have also distributed about one and half a million brochures. They faced both good and bad experiences during their campaigns but they never gave up in any situation and continued inspiring people to donate their eyes.
When Shripad Agashe was transferred to Tamil Nadu during his employment in the Atomic Energy Department, he read an article in the Reader’s Digest in 1980. Through this article, he was surprised to know the fact that country like Sri Lanka provides eyeballs to 36 countries. After taking more information about eye donation, he decided to spread the awareness on eye donation. “In 1981, when we posted a letter on eye donation in Tamilnadu, about 1200 people filled the form for donation. This became the beginning of our movement for eye donation campaign, since then we are consistently spreading awareness and taking various initiatives to inspire people for eye donation. I got a support of my wife too in this movement,” said Shripad Agashe.
After coming to Mumbai in 1991, Agashe couple continued their movement in Mumbai. Whenever there is any cultural public event, social gathering or rally in Thane, Mumbai the Agashe couple must put their stall of awareness. After being retired from the Atomic Energy Department as a Mechanical Draftsman, Shripad Agashe would have been able to earn money by doing private work with this skill. Instead, he decided to spread the eye donation awareness. He also spent money from his pocket and promoted the eye donation in the state. Eye donation camps get good response from illiterate people than the educated one and women are ahead then men for eye donation, he added. There are about 80 percent women among the forms filled for eye donation till date, informed Pushpa Agashe. A lot of awareness has to be done about eye donation in India. A small country like Sri Lanka provides 10,000 eyeball every year to a larger country like India, while 36 more other countries also gets eyeball from Sri Lanka. However, India is still far behind in eye donation, about 85 lakh people die every year in the country out of only 30,000 donate eye. If everyone donates eye, about 30 lakhs blinds in the country will get to see the world.
