CAMERAS, RAZORS, barbecues . . . everything seems to be disposable these days. Here today and gone tomorrow, such expendable products take away the mess, fuss and hassle associated with their more permanent counterparts. And perhaps the niftiest of them all are contact lenses you can use and then throw away.
Strictly speaking, disposable lenses are those replaced by the wearer every two weeks or less; when the same pair is worn daily for a month or quarterly before being thrown out, they are known as frequent-replacement lenses.
For hopeless myopics such as myself, these types of contacts are a godsend. Gone are the days of scrabbling desperately around on the floor when you drop a lens, or feeling life is about to end as one slips down the plughole minutes before you are due to go out on a hot date. Now, you simply dig out a fresh lens and get on with life as normal. As long as you remember to buy in supplies to avoid rummaging through the bin in a fruitless attempt to recycle an old pair, they are more comfortable than the old rigid lenses and more convenient than having a single pair of 'permanent' soft alternatives.
Although vision correction has improved by leaps and bounds, contact lens wearers, of which there are about 80 million worldwide, are still not completely satisfied. Red, dry and gritty eyes are just some of the more common complaints whichever type of contact lens is worn - and the visually challenged now want to be able to see all the time.
According to Brien Holden, an Australian eye expert who visited Hong Kong recently, this isn't as ridiculous a demand as it might seem. 'There has been a real push for companies to come up with the perfect contact lens that mimics the eye's wetting ability and reduces the drying effect,' Holden says. 'Providing constant vision that doesn't involve laser surgery is the future of vision correction.'
He should know. With a hefty collection of academic, professional and university appointments and awards under his belt, including being the founder and director of the Cornea and Contact Lens Research Unit at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), he is at the forefront of contact lens development in Australia. Among other positions, he is professor of optometry at UNSW, director of the Co-operative Research Centre for Eye Research and Technology (CSERT), and chair of the Refractive Error Working Group of the World Health Organisation, which aims to eliminate avoidable blindness in disadvantaged communities around the world by 2020. It was Holden's research into ocular health, which proved long-term hypoxia (lack of oxygen) to the eye could cause corneal damage, that set the benchmark for oxygen-permeable contact lenses.
