Contact Lens: Optometrist Wants Health Ministry To Take Action

KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 (Bernama) -- The Association of Malaysian Optometrists Wednesday asked the Health Ministry to take stern action against any contact lens manufacturer or distributor who sells contact lenses to unlicensed practitioners.
Its President Dr Chung Kah Meng said any distributor who advocates the practice of giving free trial pairs of contact lenses without proper eye examination by licensed contact lens practitioners should be prosecuted.
He said recent reports of fungal corneal infection among contact lens users have caused a lot of confusion and uncertainties among the users.
According to the Optical Act, he said, only registered optometrists and opticians who are specially licensed can prescribe contact lenses.
"All licensed practitioners are given an annual practising licence by the Optical Council of Malaysia located at the Health Ministry. The public can ask to see the certificates if they want to know if the practitioners are licensed," he told Bernama.
"There are however many opticians who are not licensed to prescribe contact lenses. We also know of many opticians who use the word "Optometry" in their practice pretending to be optometrists and fitting contact lenses," he said.
Dr Chung said the association, the only professional body which represents the primary eye care/optometry practitioners in Malaysia, had asked the Health Ministry to take stern action against opticians using the word "optometry" to mislead the Malaysian public.
"Time and again the Association of Malaysian Optometrists has called upon the ministry to tighten up control on unlicensed contact lens practitioners. The ministry's enforcement task force should act quickly now and prosecute these unlicensed practitioners who are selling and fitting contact lenses illegally," he said.
To upgrade the standard of primary eye care, Dr Chung said the association had also asked the ministry to speed up the process of linking Continuing Education (CE) points to the Annual Practising Licence under which practitioners must attend a certain number of hours lectures, conferences or trainings recognised by the association as a prerequisite for the licence to be renewed.
"We hope in due course, only practitioners who are knowledgeable and with current information about primary eye care will be licensed to practise annually in future," he said.
In Malaysia, there are about 1,200 licensed contact lens practitioners, besides eye doctors (ophthalmologists) who can prescribe contact lenses.
Dr Chung said increased incidences of contact lens infections reported in the media recently cannot solely be attributed to the use of certain contact lens solutions.
"Many factors may be involved in the causation of a contact lens infection e.g. poor contact lens hygiene by wearers, poor compliance, unlicensed contact lens practitioners, lack of contact lens knowledge provided by practitioners as well as lack of legislative control and enforcement on contact lens practitioners," he said.
To prevent contact lens associated infections, the association called on all contact lens wearers to adhere to proper contact lens hygiene procedures such as always wash your hands properly with soap and water and dry them before handling the contact lens, contact lens solutions and all related accessories.
"Besides that do not wet the lens with saliva, bottled water or tap water, discard any unused contact lens solutions after one month of opening the bottle and follow the wearing hours and replacement schedules as recommended by optometrists and ophthalmologists," he said.
He said the association would provide a hotline number for public consultation during working hours at Tel 012-3979498.
Any information and enquiries can be e-mailed to amonews@yahoo.com or access the homepage at www.amoptom.org