Indonesia to have new cataract lens

Indonesia to have new cataract lens

CIMAHI, West Java (JP): Good quality locally made cataract
lenses will be available soon, a lens maker said yesterday.

The president commissioner of PT Rohto Laboratories Indonesia,
W. Biantoro Wanandi, said Sunday his company, a joint venture
between Japan's Rohto and Gemala group, would make intraocular
lenses for cataract patients.

Biantoro said the lenses, with a diameter of between six to
eight millimeters, would permanently implanted into patients'
eyes.

They will be smaller than other models which have a diameter
of 11 millimeters, he said.

He said the company's cataract lens, available in one piece
instead of the usual three, were made of a plastic imported from
the Britain and made by ICI.

The plastic, known as PMMA, is a filter which counters the
harmful effects of ultraviolet rays and its safety was proven
because the PMMA had been around since 1946, he said.

He said the lenses would cost Rp 100,000 (US$38.28). Imported
lens cost between Rp 150,000 and Rp 200,000.

Eye doctors do not recommend implant surgery for patients with
high blood pressure or diabetes.

He said a surgeon could insert the lens in 15 minutes under a
local anesthetic.

The company said that between 1993 and 1996 1.47 percent of
Indonesians -- or 2.6 million people -- were blind.

Seventy percent of these had cataract blindness which strikes
people between 40 and 50 years old.

The National Eye Morbidity Survey 1982 found 1.2 percent -- or
2.1 million -- Indonesians were blind. Seventy percent of these--
or 1.4 million people -- suffered cataract blindness.

Program manager at Helen Keller International, Ermalena, said
trials at three hospitals were underway to make the cataract lens
implants more accessible to people who could not afford the
operation.

The trial hospitals include the Eye Hospital in Cicendo -- the
largest in Indonesia -- and a hospital West Nusa Tenggara.

Ermalena did not say exactly what the trials involved.

She said there had been no complications during the trials and
that the results would be announced at Perdami's annual
scientific meeting in September.

The company's official opening in Padalarang, West Java, was
held yesterday to coincide with the expansion of pharmaceutical
company PT Combiphar, also a Gemala group firm.

The minister of health, Sujudi, spoke at the opening.

Total investment in both companies is Rp 3.5 billion.

Rohto has a 60 percent stake in PT Rohto Laboratories
Indonesia and Gemala the remaining 40 percent.

Biantoro said this was first factory of its kind outside Japan
for Rohto. (01)