Racket in cataract surgeries

Patients’ right groups and eye patients are up in arms against an alleged racket carried out by eye surgeons at some government hospitals. These surgeons are said to prescribe contact lenses to be bought by cataract patients at a high cost despite the Health Ministry providing them free of charge.

Daily Mirror learns that the Health Ministry provides patients suffering from cataract a high quality lens worth about Rs.8,000 free of charge.

This lens has to be fixed by an eye surgeon after a medical check-up.

“What happens is that some of the eye surgeons prescribe a cataract lens, which has to be purchased from a particular optician. The optician charges between Rs.15.000 to 22,000 for a lens and the surgeon performs the surgery on the patient only if he or she has bought the lens from the mentioned pharmacy,” a patient who underwent the procedure at the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital told Daily Mirror on condition of anonymity.

She said it was later that she

Health Ministry provides patients suffering from cataract a high quality lens worth about Rs.8,000 free of charge

found out that the cataract surgeries carried out at state hospitals were totally free. Several patents known to her had also fallen victim to this racket.

“Eye Hospital surgeons send cataract patients to this company (not a pharmacy) near the Colombo Eye Hospital to buy the lenses for Rs.20,000. The seller is known to keep a separate list showing the names of the eye surgeons f rom whom the patient brought the purchase order,” a Health Ministry source told Daily Mirror.

This unethical practice is said to be carried out at many a state hospital including teaching hospitals at Colombo, Karapitiya, Anuradhapura and the Panadura Base Hospital among others.

A recent Health Ministry study reveals that every other person over 50 years of age are prone to cataract and eye surgery is the only therapy to cure it.