For nearly two decades, Jodhbir Mehta, MD, has helped shape corneal transplantation infrastructure in Singapore and across Southeast Asia. As a corneal surgeon, researcher and educator at the Singapore National Eye Centre, Dr. Mehta has witnessed firsthand how innovation, collaboration and access to high-quality donor tissue can transform patient care.
At the center of that work has been a long-standing partnership with Eversight—one of Singapore’s longest-running international eye banking collaborations.
Building a trusted partnership
When Dr. Mehta arrived from the United Kingdom, Singapore’s eye banking landscape looked very different. While Singapore had established a local eye bank, donor tissue availability met only about 40–50% of the country’s transplant demand. At the same time, Singapore also served many international patients traveling from neighboring countries for specialized corneal care.
“That meant we still had to import a large amount of tissue from overseas,” Dr. Mehta explained. “Over the years, we received tissue from many places, but one of the biggest challenges has always been reliability and quality assurance.”
Today, that international supply is far safer and more dependable—due in large part to Eversight’s role as a trusted partner.
“Now, almost all the imported tissue we use comes from the United States, mainly from Eversight,” he said. “The quality is very high, the standards are validated internationally and locally in Singapore, and that quality assurance is vitally important.”
For Dr. Mehta, that reliability is not simply operational. It directly impacts patient trust, surgical outcomes and quality of life.
“I’ve seen patients who unfortunately had poor transplant outcomes elsewhere, sometimes related to tissue quality or early infections,” he said. “While you can never guarantee anything 100%, having confidence in the tissue source allows you to reassure patients. You can tell them where the tissue comes from, explain the track record and help ease some of that fear.”
Expanding access to vision care in Singapore
That reassurance is especially meaningful in a region where access to donor tissue remains limited. In many neighboring countries, patients may wait months—or even years—for a cornea transplant.
For patients experiencing progressive vision loss, those delays can be devastating.
“You’re telling someone, ‘We know what you need. We can do the surgery, but there’s no tissue available.’ That’s incredibly difficult,” Dr. Mehta said.
In Dr. Mehta’s experience, reliable access to donor tissue also means fewer cancellations and faster visual recovery for patients eager to return to their daily lives, including traveling, working and caring for their families.
“At the end of the day, it’s about improving that patient’s quality of life,” he said. “Having a robust and reliable tissue pipeline makes a huge difference.”
Beyond improving access, the partnership has also helped accelerate surgical innovation and education across the region.
Driving innovation through partnership
Dr. Mehta says the evolution of corneal transplantation over the last two decades would not have been possible without close collaboration between surgeons and eye banks.
“A lot of the change has been driven by innovations that eye banks have taken on and helped bring to surgeons,” he said. “Without that partnership, many of these technologies would never have reached patients at the level we see today.”
From the shift from full-thickness to advanced partial-thickness surgeries, to increasingly advanced lamellar surgical techniques—where only layers of a damaged or diseased cornea are removed—eye banks, like Eversight, have played a central role in helping surgeons adopt new approaches safely and effectively.
“It’s a massive team effort,” Dr. Mehta said. “From the eye bankers, to the nurses, to the counselors in clinic and the surgeons themselves—everyone plays a role in getting these innovations to patients.”
Training the next generation of corneal surgeons
For nearly 20 years, Dr. Mehta has led advanced corneal surgery training courses in Singapore focused on modern lamellar surgical techniques. Access to donor tissue from Eversight for wet labs and hands-on training has been essential to those programs.
“As surgery has evolved from full-thickness transplants to highly specialized microsurgical techniques, the learning curve has become much steeper,” he explained. “Trainees need opportunities to practice in wet labs before they ever operate on a patient.”
Through Eversight’s support and provision of tissue for education and research, surgeons from around the world have been able to build confidence and bring advanced techniques back to their own countries.
“One of the best parts is when someone emails after performing their first successful case,” Dr. Mehta said. “You realize that even a few hours of training can have a huge impact on that individual and eventually on their patients.”
Looking toward the future of care
Dr. Mehta believes educational partnerships will only become more important as corneal transplantation continues to evolve through cell therapies, regenerative medicine and emerging surgical innovations.
“There are still many patients worldwide who simply don’t have access to tissue at all,” he said. “That’s where partnerships between eye banks and corneal surgeons are going to continue making a difference.”
As new therapies emerge, he says education will remain critical—not only for surgeons, but also for eye bankers, nurses and patients navigating rapidly changing treatment options.
“It’s evolving very quickly,” Dr. Mehta said. “And I think it’s an incredibly exciting time in cornea.”
Learn more
Through partnerships, innovation and education, Eversight continues working alongside surgeons around the world to expand access to sight-restoring care.
Learn more about Eversight’s global impact and how donor tissue is transforming lives worldwide.