More than two million people in the UK live with sight loss and some conditions can be treated with corneal donations. Around 5,000 corneal transplants are needed every year in the UK, so we want to help with this.

Here at the Hospice, we are working with the NHS blood and transplant team to encourage patients to consider this as an option when they come into our care and to also help families understand what this entails.

Poor eyesight, medical conditions including cancer, and old age, aren’t barriers to donating your corneas.

There’s a real shortage of donors and giving the gift of sight to someone else can be amazing.

This is something patients can do up to 24 hours after they have died, either in the Hospice or funeral home.

Meet Margaret.

Margaret is a patient with pancreatic cancer who has signed up to donate her corneas. She sees it as a lasting legacy, saying: “It is the best feeling in the world to know that I can do this and give my sight to someone else to see what I have seen.”

Her husband Geoff says that knowing Margaret’s organs could help others would help him following her death. He adds: “It’s something to live on through someone else so it doesn’t seem we have lost everything when that day comes.”

Her story was recently featured on ITV Calendar News: The York hospice encouraging patients to leave a ‘legacy’ by donating corneas | ITV News Calendar