Rocío Arias Silva, MD, an eye bank technician and an administrative support doctor in the only eye bank currently operating in Costa Rica, attended the recent Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) Annual meeting as the recipient of the 2024 Mary Jane O’Neill Fellowship award. The meeting was held in June in Kansas City, MO. As part of the Fellowship, Dr. Silva also observed eye banking operations while visiting Advancing Sight Network in Birmingham, AL, this year’s host eye bank. At the Clinica Oftalmologica, which is a specialist unit of the Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social in Costa Rica, Dr. Silva is responsible for retrieving corneal tissue, evaluating potential donors and processing and preserving tissue for therapeutic purposes. She also participates in donation campaigns and educational lectures designed to reduce myths and misconceptions which surround the donation of corneal tissue in that country.
She became a doctor in 2015 and started working in the Clínica Oftalmologica in December 2017. She furthered her education in the area of ocular tissue retrieval and began running an eye bank in 2018. Educated in Medellín, Colombia at the Pan-American Eye Bank Association and in México City in the Conde de Valencia Institute Eye Bank and México National University, she is also qualified as a specialist in Health Administration. Dr. Silva’s goal is to further her expertise in cornea recovery, learn advanced tissue processing techniques and increase the success of corneal transplant surgery for recipients. Additionally, she wants to help reduce the national waiting time for corneal transplant in Costa Rica.
The Mary Jane O’Neill Fellowship in International Eye Banking was established in 2001 to provide medical or technical personnel from international eye banks with the skills necessary to develop, operate, and maintain successful eye banks within their own countries thereby reducing blindness due to corneal disease or injury. The EBAA Fellowship was named for Mary Jane O’Neill, former Executive Director of The Eye-Bank for Sight Restoration (1980 – 2000) in New York City, in recognition of her significant efforts to expand eye banking in countries outside the U.S. Mary Jane passed away in 2016 at the age of 92.
Mary Jane O’Neill