Mobile eye clinic for rural folk next year

Star: BENTONG: The Health Ministry will set up a mobile eye clinic next year to provide screening for cataracts, glaucoma and other eye diseases among the rural population nationwide.
Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said Saturday the clinic, which would cost RM1mil, would also arrange for patients to be treated and operated upon at local hospitals.
“This will improve the people's accessibility to such services,” he told reporters after a visit to the Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital mobile eye clinic, which provided its services at the Bentong Health Clinic here.
He said the mobile eye clinic would have an optometrist while treatment and operations at local hospitals would be performed by visiting ophthalmologists.
Liow said in Malaysia, about 2.7% of the population or 783,000 people suffered from visual impairment.
“The major cause of visual impairment in the country is refractive errors (43.7%), followed by cataracts (36.3%),” he said.
As for blindness, he said, the prevalence in Malaysia was estimated to be about 0.3% or 87,000 people.
However, he said, only about 64,000 blind people were registered with the Welfare Department last year.
He said the common causes of blindness in Malaysia included cataract (40%), retinal disease (24.5%), uncorrected refractive error (4.1%), corneal disease (3.4%) and glaucoma (1.8%).
Liow said currently, there were 350 ophthalmologists in the country, including 182 with the ministry.
He added that the ministry was also recruiting 40 doctors into the Masters programme in ophthalmology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Malaya every year.