As millions of transplants per year are needed by the world to help the people with problems of vision, various governments have been promoting eye donation in many ways. There are helpline numbers, there are different awareness campaigns and there are eye donation weeks etc. to make it more popular.

In certain countries there are provisions of eye donation even if no written proof is available of the    consent of the deceased. In such cases, only it is required that an individual relating to him should tell the authorities that the deceased had ever expressed his wish to donate his/her eyes.

There are rules and regulations relating to eye donations. Due to the social, religious and other reasons the progress in the laws promoting the eye donation has been slow but now the thrust on modifying the laws in this direction is there as some countries have come up with good results of their more effective laws.

In the US the laws relating to organ donation and eye donation have been left with the states. But these are expected to be in conformity with laws in other states. Whereas the promotion of eye donation is good through many popular measures like the one in which one’s wish is to be given on his/her driving license. It makes the authorities easy to know if the deceased person was willing to donate his/her eyes or not.

But the laws of US fall in the category that are called to be a matter of ‘pure consent’ that restricts the donation, subject to the availability of the evidence of the concerned fellow’s wish to donate eyes. The similar is the system in many of the countries of Europe including the UK. But in as many as 24 countries in the European Union, there has been the laws following ‘presumed consent’ in the matter of eye donation. And these countries have been performing well in this regard. The figure of 24 countries is as of 2010. The UK is likely to switch to the presumed consent system of laws soon, as there are debates on the issue and the shift is evident in the general opinion there.

Given the fact that the humane concern for the blinds can be meted out in this 21st century dominated by science, it is logical for countries to shift to this presumed consent system. But there are still many hindrances in this way. There are backward societies to come out of the superstitions of people and there are various modern democratic concerns that advocate the explicit consent. Awareness both on humanitarian and scientific grounds is a must in any case.