No one doubts that the diminutive Dr Hudson Silva has made a massive impact on the world of medical science by alleviating human suffering through his eye bank. But he was not satisfied.

``In the course of meetings with other medical specialists and scientists, I discovered that there was a serious shortage of human tissues which could also be collected from donors,'' Silva told PSin an interview.

Today, Silva's tissue bank is a model in the Asia Pacific region and is worthy of his Sri Lanka International Eye Bank which has since inception in 1961 donated 40,000 corneas to 168 cities in 62 countries besides thousands to local recipients.

The Sri Lankan doctor's success and entrepreneurial spirit has been captured by many newspapers and magazines all over the world. The US publication, the Reader's Digest featured him in severalof its issues.

Silva has been honoured by many countries and has helped raise funds for government eye hospitals. An eye hospital in Pakistan has been named after him.

Sri Lanka passed the Cornea Graft Act in 1955 under which only the eyes of prisoners on death row could be removed for this purpose. But the following year, the government suspended the death penalty which cut off supplies.

Watching a cornea grafting operation for the first time in 1957 changed Silva's life and he decided to donate his eyes, on death. His mother followed suit. He then wrote articles in the newspapers urging people to donate their eyes.

Since Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist, it was not difficult to persuade people that donating eyes was a meritorious deed and the public response was good, he said. Passing out of medical school, Silva was posted as a doctor at the government hospital in the southern town of Kalutara where he continued to canvass for eye donations. He received his first set of eyes in 1959.

``It wasironic. The hospital head was a Roman Catholic but he allowed me to remove the eyes of an unknown civilian who had died in hospital,'' he recalls.

In 1960, Silva moved to the Colombo Eye Hospital, the country's premier eye institution but continued to operate his small eye bank at home, helped by his wife.

Word spread about the doctor's efforts and soon the act of donating one's eyes caught on and the numbers became much more than what was required. According to estimates, about two per cent of Asia's population suffer from blindness and a fourth of this figure have corneal blindness, which can be cured by a corneal transplant.

``I was criticised for overdoing this collection of eyes,'' he said, adding that because of the excess he wrote to unnamed eye surgeons in the United States, Britain, Japan, Singapore and India offering free eyes.

``I just put letters in the post addressed to - the eye surgeon. There were responses from Singapore and India,'' Silva said. On May 25, 1964, which was Vesak Daymarking the birth, enlightenment and death of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, the first set of eyes was sent to Singapore.