Rob Andrews, 56, received a cornea transplant in Dunedin recently to restore sight in his left eye, which he had not been able to see out of for years due to a rare condition.
It would not have been possible without someone becoming a donor when they died.
Mr Andrews was first diagnosed with keratoconus as a teenager.
The eye condition causes the cornea — the clear tissue covering the front of the eye — to grow in a pointed, cone-like shape.
"When I was in high school, my vision started degenerating, it was over a period of a couple of years and I never really noticed it.
Behind the wheel at about age 16, it became clear just how bad his eyesight had become.
He was driving with his mother, who noticed he could not see things that were coming up ahead of him in the road.
While the condition could sometimes be managed with contact lenses, his was severe enough that a transplant was needed — he received his first donated cornea in his right eye in 1996.
A decade later in 2006, he received his second cornea transplant, this time for his left eye.
However after five or six years his body rejected the second transplant.
"Since then my left eye has just been cloudy and I haven’t been able to see out of it."
The body adapted to only seeing with one eye, so he had still been able to go about his daily tasks, although depth perception was a struggle at first.
However his third cornea transplant, carried out on his left eye by a private provider in November 2023, would give him the security of vision in both eyes.
Healing from the procedure would take another two or three months, he said.
It had already made a difference, although he still required glasses or contact lenses.
"I’ve just had this graft done and now the vision in my left eye, uncorrected, is better than the vision in my right eye."
If not for his condition, he doubted he would have given the issue of donation a second thought.
"Without people donating like that I would be functionally blind ... I wouldn’t be able to drive or do anything like that.
"Once I got my first corneal graft in ’96 I became a donor after that because I felt it was incumbent on me to be able to return the favour if I could."
Unlike other types of donations, corneas could be taken for a longer timeframe after the death of the donor, and could also be stored for up to a month before a graft.
Some people may not want to give their organs or tissue after their death for cultural or religious reasons, he said.
However he hoped to highlight the huge impact donation could have for people who had no reason not to, but had simply never thought much about it.
"You give someone else a chance at at living a better life, basically."
Somebody had essentially died for him to have that chance, he said.
Somewhere out there was a family who had faced a Christmas without their loved one.
His appreciation for the unknown donor made him feel he needed to speak out about the issue.
An Official Information Act response provided to the Otago Daily Times by the New Zealand Blood Service said there were 56 deceased donors nationally last year between January 1 and November 16.
This included four people recorded from Dunedin.
There were also 55 live kidney donors nationally in the same timeframe, including four recorded from Dunedin.
Data on the number of Southerners who had received donations was not held by the service, and the response noted a transplant did not necessarily occur in the same region a person lived.
Ticking the donor option on a driver licence form did not count as informed consent as required by the Human Tissue Act, the service said.
If someone died in a situation where organ donation might be possible, family was asked what the person would want to happen.
Therefore the most important thing people could do was have a conversation.
