H

ealth Minister Nila Farid Moeloek has said Indonesia might fail to reach the World Health Organization (WHO) target of ridding the country of blindness by 2020 as it was still struggling to deal with cataracts.

Nila said the number of cataract sufferers had increased by 250,000 every year while the government’s capability to conduct cataract surgeries was low.

“It’s really hard to catch up with the huge number of cataract patients,” Nila said on the day when the Indonesian Museum of Records’ (MURI) record for the highest number of cataract operations in a day was broken in Batam, Riau Islands, last weekend.

A total of 383 patients joined the free cataract surgery services event, which was jointly held by the Association of Eye Specialists (Perdami) and Pollux Habibie Properties, in cooperation with a local hospital in Batam.

Nila said that the growing economy, the changing lifestyle of Indonesians, and the fact that Indonesia was a tropical country contributed to the increase in the number of people with cataracts.

She said to reach the WHO target of ensuring everyone had the right to see optimally by 2020, the Health Ministry had set up a national eye committee tasked with working on the roadmap to deal with blindness issues in Indonesia through cataract surgeries. Perdami data shows that cataracts accounts for 80 percent of blindness cases in Indonesia.

“This is really hard to achieve,” Nila said, adding that the latest assessment showed that the percentage of cataract patients in Indonesia compared to the country’s total population had increased from 0.5 percent previously to three percent currently.

She said her ministry had also prepared a budget to meet the WHO target, but declined to reveal the exact amount.

She added that cataract surgeries provided by the private sector had also been part of the effort to lessen the number of cataract sufferers in Indonesia. “We are preparing for a cataract operation safari program together with the TNI, to be conducted in a number of provinces.”

Meanwhile Perdami chairman Muhammad Sidiq said that Indonesia could only conduct cataract operations for some 180,000 patients per year.

“That is why we cooperate with other parties to help return people’s sight,” he said, adding that Indonesia currently had some 2,000 eye specialists nationwide, which was far from ideal.

Sidiq also said that the facoemulsification technique used at last weekend’s event was the latest technology which had number of advantages both in terms of time and technique and was considered comfortable by the patients.

President Commissioner of Pollux Habibie International, Ilham Akbar Habibie, said that the cataract operations conducted on the 383 patients was a present to the Batam people.

“As we have our Meistertadt apartment project here, we do this as a contribution to the people of Batam,” he said.

Separately head of the Riau Islands provincial health agency, Tjetjep Yudiana, said that there were currently 800 people with cataracts in the province, spread across its seven regencies and cities.

“A cataract surgery costs some Rp 8 million per person, which is relatively expensive for people. Cooperation with other parties is one of the ways we are looking to help control the number of cataract patients,” Tjetjep said.