High-tech Nepali lab manufacturing IOL

“I waited for a whole year so I could have my operation done by the doctors from Nepal,” said 80 years old Begum of Tangail in Bangladesh during a cataract eye camp. There is no doubt. Tilganga Eye Centre of Kathmandu, Nepal is the leader in blindness prevention in the region.

Inside Nepal, Tilganga is the centre of excellence. Every year at the Tilganga Eye Centre around 100,000 patients with cataract problems are implanted with IOL. Cataracts are treated by implantation of the Intraocular Lens (IOL) through surgery. However, very few might know that the IOL used for cataract surgery is in fact made at the Fred Hollows Foundation IOL Lab in the Tilganga Eye Centre. When one at first visits the Tilganga Eye Centre, it is hard to believe that inside the building lies a state of the art, high-tech lab – the best in the country and in South Asia. Certified by a handful of quality control agencies like ISO 9002 across the globe, it is clearly the prize scientific laboratories in Nepal.

Mainly established for service purposes the laboratory is capable to produce around 1500 lenses everyday. At first, Tilganga manufactured only 33,000 lenses a year but now the lab has a capability of to produce up to 350,000 each year. "From the very beginning we focused on low cost high quality production," said Dr Sandruik, Medical Director of Tilganga. Furthermore, all the technicians involved in the manufacturing process are Nepalese. According to Rabindra Kumar Shrestha, Engineer of the lab, the lenses produced by Nepalese technicians are exported to more than fifty countries. "And the demand is increasing," adds Shrestha.

The centre exports IOLs mostly to developing countries of Latin America, South Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and South Africa. Pleased with the development of the Centre Dr. Ruit said, "In the beginning we suffered a lot while establishing this high-tech manufacturing laboratory because it was a new technology and there was no way to compromise in quality."

Around a decade ago a lens used to cost about 4 to 5 thousand, which has now been lowered to 6 Australian dollars in the Nepalese market, however, the exporting rate is around 8 Australian dollars. Before this IOL implants were only limited to the rich and high-class families. The poor and lower class families had to manage with thick power glasses. But now over 99 percent of the cataract patients are implanted with the IOL lens in Nepal.

The implantation of the lens takes around 10 minutes. And a patient can see within 24 hours. Dr. Ruit has in one day planted the lens in more than 100 patients, while at various eye camps in different districts. Other than eye services within the valley Tilganga also organises eye camps in various remote hilly districts from time to time. Similarly, the centre donates around 4000 lens to various eye centres of remote villages each year.

However, there is still a long way to go. With new doctors being trained overseas like Dr Suman Thapa, the only glaucoma specialist in Nepal who trained in Australia, the legacy of Dr Ruit will continue. The Nepal Eye Glaucoma Clinic, the first ever in the country, will soon be built in Tilganga and a group of Australians a re working hard to raise the money. With these initiations, within the next 10 years the field of eye care in Nepal will match that of the world.