Vietnamese child donates corneas before death

A moribund young Vietnamese girl with cancer had allowed her corneas to be given to someone in need before she died on Thursday.

Doctors perform a cornea transplant in Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The donor, seven years and three months old, was diagnosed with a type of nervous system cancer in September 2017.

Prior to her death on the afternoon of February 22, the family made a phone call to the Vietnam National Coordinating Center for Human Organ Transplantation around noon expressing her wish to donate her eye components, according to Nguyen Huu Hoang, director of the Eye Bank at Vietnam’s Central Eye Hospital.

After she died, Hoang and technicians from the Eye Bank arrived at the hospital where she had been treated.

“Give sight to another person, will you?” her mother told her before kissing her on the forehead.

Hoang said that this is the most poignant cornea-giving case he has seen during the past ten years.

At the time of the removal, “tears clogged my throat. The girl looked as if she was sleeping like an angel, and I began my job in the gentlest and most careful way so as not to wake her from her slumber,” he said.

“I’m proud of you,” the mother said while looking at her daughter after the technicians had completed the collection.

The child, whose mother is a worker in public health, lived in Hanoi, according to Hoang.

VNF/TTO