PAL Offers Free Rides to Transport Human Organs Onshore

By JENNY F. MANONGDO
November 1, 2010, 3:57pm
Manila Bulletin

MANILA, Philippines – As part of its corporate social responsibility program, Philippine Airlines (PAL), the country’s flag-carrier, has partnered with Eye Bank Foundation of the Philippines in delivering human eye corneal tissue for free to domestic destinations.

The alliance began during the recent celebration of the World Sight Day, where other non-governmental organizations and private companies also partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO) for the program.

“Thousands of Filipinos are visually impaired. With very limited number of eye donors, it will take a concerted effort by both government and the private sector to bring to manageable levels the incidence of blindness and visual impairment. We are more than glad that, in small way, to be of help to those needing corneal transplants in the Philippines,” said PAL president and CEO Jaime Bautista.
Under the partnership, Eye Bank representatives coordinate with PAL’s cargo reservation department at least a day before the intended date of transport. PAL allows the shipment of one human corneal tissue per flight.

Bautista said PAL is open to transport other human organs.

“PAL also accepts human organs packed in especially designed containers or hand-carry baggage on all domestic flights and provides members of government’s retrieval team with special boarding and deplaning privileges (“last-in-first-out”), “he said.

Based on WHO statistics about 314 million people are visually impaired worldwide, of which 45 million of them are blind. While, 87 percent of the world's visually impaired live in developing countries.
Most people with visual impairment are older with females more at risk at every age, in every part of the world. About 87 percent of those visually impaired are age 50 and older.

On the other hand, child blindness remains a significant problem globally. An estimated 1.4 million blind children below age 15 will live in blindness for many years.

In addition, more than 12 million children ages five to 15 are visually impaired because of uncorrected refractive errors such as near-sightedness, far-sightedness or astigmatism, conditions that could be easily diagnosed and corrected with glasses, contact lenses or refractive surgery.