March is National Eye Donor Month
Sign up in the Donate Life Registry now and you may someday leave the beautiful gift of sight to someone who is blind. There is no cost to be a donor and even people who wear glasses can donate. According to The Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration, a non-profit organization serving the Greater New York City area, hundreds of men, women and children can be saved from blindness each year with sight-saving cornea transplants made possible with donor eye tissue. More than 10,000 other New Yorkers who are waiting for life-saving organ and tissue transplants can be helped through organ and tissue donation. Donating your eyes and other organs at death can restore sight and health to persons in need.
There are a number of ways New Yorkers can sign up in the Donate Life Registry starting with when you are getting a new or renewed driver’s license either in person at a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office or when completing forms by mail.
All residents of New York City who apply for a free municipal ID card also have the option of enrolling to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor by completing the section provided on the application. IDNYC is available to any city resident regardless of immigration status as a method of identification for various government and non-government services. Go to nyc.gov/IDNYC for more information or to apply online.
Visit The Eye-Bank’s web site, www.eyedonation.org, and click on the “Become a Donor” button to download a form or call The Eye-Bank at (212) 742-9000 and ask to be sent an enrollment form in the mail. Whether you sign up when getting a new driver’s license, a free ID card, or by going to The Eye-Bank’s web site, the New York State Department of Health will send you a letter confirming you are in the State’s Donate Life Registry. “I signed up!” Once you sign up to become a donor, ask your family and friends to do the same. Join the thousands of friends on Facebook who have posted their decision to donate on their status bars and “like” The Eye-Bank page on Facebook.
For more information about eye donation and the good that it can do, call The EyeBank for Sight Restoration (212) 742-9000 or go to www.eyedonation.org.