Need a corneal transplant? Live in Ontario? I would suggest going to Nairobi if you want the corneas donated by a fellow Ontarian. Here at home, the operating rooms are all booked up (my guess would be abortions and gender reassignments).

In Grace’s dusty village, near the industrial town of Thika on the outskirts of Nairobi, Canada is unfamiliar and strange. She cocks her head in amusement when she learns people are silly enough to put sticks on their feet and bomb down mountains in the middle of winter. She’s in stitches at the thought of a snowflake landing on the tip of her nose.

But for the rest of her life, the shy, sweet girl from Kenya, who dreams of someday becoming a teacher, is forever linked to an anonymous Canadian. A 50-year-old, from somewhere in Ontario, who recently died and gave Grace the gift of sight.

In light of that, this is surprising: It’s no easy feat to get a cornea transplant in Ontario. There’s actually a shortage of corneas for transplant and people, mostly seniors, wait years for the elective surgery as their eyesight deteriorates.

Yet we’re still able to send tissue that could be placed locally to Africa because of an intractable system that doesn’t flex when there is a surplus of donations that could reduce the wait list here.

The Canadian Eye Bank, which handles all provincial donations, does everything it can to give tissue to those on the wait list. But if it will go to waste, the bank donates the corneas elsewhere in the world.

The system is flawed because operating rooms cannot be freed up in the event of a surplus of donated corneas, which must be transplanted within seven to nine days. On the other side, the system can’t move nimbly when there is a shortage of donations either.

Ontario has twisted itself in knots trying to get more and more people onto the donor list, but if our operating rooms are jam packed for over three years, there’s nothing we can do with the tissue except throw it out or send it elsewhere.

Which also means that despite lacking a donation program, Nairobi actually has a more efficient surgical system that allows for urgent and time-sensitive matters to make it to the operating room. Unlike here in the so-called “civilized” world.

For shame.

Conservatives and the Space Program