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The Human Tissue Bank of the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society was established in 1996. Dashabandu Late Dr. F.G. Hudson Silva is the founder of the Sri Lanka Human Tissue Bank. We provide many kinds of tissues (Body Parts) such as all kind of Bones, Fascialata, Pericardium, Tendons, Eye Sclera, and Amniotic Membrane. We have provided tissues to over 13,000 disabled patients including the three Armed forces and police completely free of charge. For the last 25 years Sri Lankan Surgeons such as Orthopedics, Plastic, Eye and Maxillofacial, grafted these tissues in addition to Cardiac and Neuro surgeons without any complaints. Tissues are sterilized by Co60 Gamma Radiation using a dose of 25kGy. Those tissues are utilized at Colombo National Hospital, South and North Colombo Teaching Hospitals, Karapitiya, Matara, Kandy, Peradeniya, Negombo, Jaffna, Ampara, Vavuniya, Batticaloa, Sri Jayawardanapura, Nawaloka, Lanka Hospital, Military and Police Hospitals. After fulfilling local requirements we have provided some excess tissues to Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, India, Pakistan, and Dubai and with good results.

Our next step is to process human Skin and Heart valve in Sri Lanka. It will be a very useful for the patients who need skin and heart valves. At present plastic surgeons are using auto grafts (same patient’s skin) to cover the burned wounds. It is a painful and patients who have more than 40% burned surgeon cannot take skin from the same patients. Currently artificial implants used. These are very expensive. For this case surgeon needs donor skin to cover the burned wounds. Sri Lanka Human Tissue Bank has a program to process human skin at the Tissue Bank. It will very helpful for the patients and the surgeons. Many Plastic Surgeons are requesting human skin from the tissue bank. We are also planning to process Human Heart Valve at the Sri Lanka Human Tissue Bank. At present heart valves are imported from European countries and it will cost about Rs. 700,000.00 (US$ 3,500 to 4,000). Most Sri Lankan patients are using animal heart valves and prosthesis because of their economic constraints. But per year thousands of usable hearts are buried or cremated in Sri Lanka. So we planned to collect these human hearts and process heart valve in Sri Lanka. It will be a very helpful for Sri Lankan heart patients because we planned to issue these heart valves completely free of charge as usual. As an experiment for first time in Sri Lanka we have processed Human Heart valves at the Tissue Bank

 

Tissue Bank Profile

The Human Tissue Bank is the Model Project of the International Atomic Energy Agency implemented in Sri Lanka. This acceptance of the Tissue Bank as a model project is the culmination of a series of events. In Sri Lanka, we had envisaged the establishment of a Tissue Bank to serve the people of the country for over 25 years. It appeared to be the natural progress of the eye donation movement, which itself started way back in 1959 for the purpose of providing donor corneas for the Eye Hospital in Colombo.

We had established ourselves as a major source of donor eyes to the world by the time the first Tissue Bank conference was held in Bombay in 1983. At that crucial meeting Sri Lanka was represented by Dr. Hudson Silva. He described what we had achieved in donation of eyes; and mentioned that a tissue bank is the next natural step. The prime movers of the Conference Prof. Glyn O Phillips of UK and Dr. Ramen Mukherjee of the Life Sciences Division of IAEA recognized the potential of Sri Lanka as the best place in the Asia Pacific Region to have a tissue bank.

The Human Tissue Transplantation Act No 48 was passed in 1987. So the tissue procurement and transplantation is legal in Sri Lanka. This act has stipulated the terms and conditions under which the extraction, processing, storage, retrieval and utilization of human tissues should performed in Sri Lanka. It has covered all the legal requirements protecting donors, doctors and recipients. The Model Human Tissue Bank conforms to all these regulations. The operations of the facility fulfill the needs of Sri Lankan hospitals as well as foreign hospitals.

The Model Project SRL/7/003 approved by IAEA envisages a multi-tissue bank dealing with all donor tissues including amnion, skin, bones, soft tissues (including tendons, ligaments, pericardium, fascia lata and eye sclera). Our plan is to obtain all donor tissues and make them available nationally, regionally and internationally

 

Following Tissues are processed in the Sri Lanka Human Tissue Bank

 

Tissue Utilization Local

  1. National Hospital, Colombo
  2. National Eye Hospital, Colombo
  3. Military Hospital, Colombo
  4. General Hospital, Sri Jayawardanapura
  5. Government General Hospital, Kandy
  6. Government General Hospital, Peradeniya
  7. Government General Hospital, Badulla
  8. Government General Hospital, Kurunegala
  9. Government General Hospital, Rathnapura
  10. Government General Hospital, Batticalo
  11. Government General Hospital, Jaffna

 

Tissue Utilization International

  1. Madras Bone Tumor Center, India
  2. National University Hospital, Singapore
  3. Malaysian Tissue Bank – Kulala Lumpur, Malaysia
  4. El Basrat Foundation, Pakistan
  5. Kiryu Eye Clinic, Japan
  6. Thun Hussain Eye Hospital, Malaysia
  7. Tissue Bank, Korea
  8. Albasar International Foundation – Makkah Eye Hospital – Khartoum, Sudan
Click here to make a tissue request online. Tissue Request Form
  • Time Limit       : Tissues should be retrieved within 12 hours of death
  • Age Limit         : Above 10 years to 70 years
  • Diseases           : Donors diseases classified by WHO are excluded
  • Transport         : All transport facilities provide by Human Tissue Bank
  • Donors Consent or
  • Guardians Consent at the time of death
  • Registered Death Certificate
  • I.D. Card of the Guardian
  • Medical Report and History
  • The Body appears as in the original
  • Body can be returned to guardians for final arrangements
  • Body can be buried with the help of Tissue Bank
  • Blood of the tissue donors is tested for HIV 1 & 2, Hepatitis B & C and Syphilis in addition to blood culture.

Decompressive Craniectomy is a management option to control raised intracranial pressure in Traumatic Brain Injury & another kind of brain defects. After Decompressive Craniectomy a traditional method is to place the bone flap in a subcutaneous pocket at the abdominal wall till retrieval for Cranioplasty. But in most cases, the bone flap will be disposed of and titanium mesh for the Cranioplasty is used.

Then we proposed the Bone Flap preservation method to the National Hospital of Sri Lanka. This was a very cost-effective and sustainable project for Cranioplasty patients. Because titanium mesh cost around Rs. 100,000.00 to 300,000.00.This is not an affordable amount for most of the patients in Sri Lanka. However, in high-risk patients with soft-tissue defects, the outcomes are significantly worse after titanium mesh Cranioplasty. From the beginning now we were already launched this project to all island Teaching, General Hospitals & Private Hospitals in Sri Lanka Including Teaching Hospital in Jaffna and Batticaloa.

At the tissue bank we processed, preserved, sterilized and dispatched more than 3,000 bone flap to patients who underwent Decompressive Craniectomy from 2015 to up to now at Neuro Trauma Centre, National Hospital of Sri Lanka and all island Teaching Hospitals.

All bone flaps are sterilized by Co60 Gamma radiation at the 25kGy with standard packing method.  Software base management system is applied for this skull flap project.