Meeting the Need for Corneal Transplantation in Syria: Islamic Perspectives and Barriers to Building a Sustainable Eye Banking System
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the religious, cultural, and systemic barriers to corneal donation and transplantation in Syria and to propose a context-specific framework for establishing a sustainable eye banking system. Methods: We conducted a narrative review incorporating retrospective data from Syria's largest eye hospital and an analysis of Islamic legal opinions related to corneal donation. Key barriers to donation and access to corneal transplantation were identified through thematic synthesis of clinical and religious sources. Results: Between 1997 and 2025, over 74% of documented cases of corneal pathology requiring transplantation remained untreated because of limited infrastructure, severe shortages in donor tissue, and cultural beliefs. While public hesitancy is driven by concerns over bodily integrity and mistrust in the health system, Islamic jurisprudence overwhelmingly supports corneal donation as a permissible and charitable act. Conclusions: Religious alignment and community education present major opportunities for expanding corneal donation in Syria. We propose a framework for sustainable eye banking rooted in operational feasibility, religious endorsement, and public trust.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".