It was late in the evening on December 30 two years ago when Dr Vikas Mittal’s number flashed on Mridula Chhetri Singh’s mobile phone in New Delhi. It was actually his assistant calling on his behalf from Ambala, 200 km or so away. The surgeon urgently needed a corneal tissue for a transplant that he had to perform before January 1 if his patient’s eye was to be saved.
In minutes, Singh had sent out the request to a nationwide network of eye banks she is in touch with. A tissue was found with the Eye Bank Association Kerala at Little Flower Hospital in Angamaly, 2,600 km away in the south. The challenge was to get it to Dr Mittal in Ambala by January 1.