Experts urge tight control over lenses
Tighter controls should be introduced in Hong Kong over the prescription of Ortho-K corrective contact lenses suspected to have caused permanent eye damage to 16 SAR children, experts and researchers who support the treatment admitted yesterday.
They argued the lenses were safe but said some untrained opticians were prescribing them wrongly. A manufacturer of the lenses also said they had no control over which opticians gave the lenses out in Hong Kong.
The defence came after the Department of Health on Wednesday warned there was no evidence to show Ortho-K lenses could cure short-sightedness and urged the public to use them with care.
Chinese University earlier revealed how 16 children had suffered permanent eye damage over the past two years as a result of using the corrective lenses. One 13-year-old girl lost 80 per cent of her vision in one eye.
Australian Ortho-K specialist John Mountford, who is in Hong Kong to advise Polytechnic University researchers on the technique, said: 'Unscrupulous opticians prescribe cheap and sub-standard lenses to customers who want to save money.'
He also criticised the Hong Kong licensing system for allowing unqualified optometrists to prescribe and fit the lenses. He said in Asia, the lenses were treated as a consumer item and Asian users' hygiene standards were not as high as in America and Australia, where there were no reports of user infection. In one case in Singapore, a family allowed their domestic helper to clean their child's lenses after she had cleaned the toilet, he said.
Professor George Woo, chairman of optometry and dean of the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences at the Polytechnic University, admitted there was no proof the treatment could cure near-sightedness. But a $2 million research project is under way at the university's eye clinic and was expected to be completed at the end of next year, he said.
An expert panel was set up last year to conduct research on the safety and efficacy of the treatment and provide professional training courses for qualified contact lens practitioners.
'We observe that the treatment is getting ever more popular locally, with 70 per cent of the adult population short-sighted and myopia progression in young children so serious,' said Professor Woo.
Pauline Cho Wong Hie-hua, the Polytechnic University's associate professor in the department of optometry, said the panel was in discussions with the optometry profession to issue certificates to eye-practitioners qualified for fitting the lens.
Bonnie Wan Kwok-ling, the manager for the major American Ortho-K lens manufacturer, Dreimlens, said they supplied lenses to any optometrist who placed orders.
Legislator Dr Lo Wing-lok said he would consult the College of Ophthalmologists and the optometry profession to see what the Government could do to improve safe use of the lenses, including possible legislation.
