Abstract

Untreated cataract remains the leading cause of avoidable blindness in Indonesia, as it pointed out 1.9% prevalence of the total population, with incidence of 0.1% and the backlog between 320,000 and 350,000 cases per year. It is reported that 51.6% of people do not know if they suffer from cataracts, 11.6% because they cannot afford it, and 8.1% due to fear of surgery. SMEC eye care system was established with a model similar to Aravind’s to increase the number of cataract surgeries with high volume, high quality, affordable, and accessible cataract surgery, combined with well-designed outreach programs to increase demand. The results are that there are 29 branches of eye hospitals and eye clinics from west to east region of Indonesia, with a total of 58,000 cataract surgeries per year. SMEC also collaborates with private and public hospitals to develop their eye clinics to reach out to more people with blindness. Although with a high volume of cataract surgeries, SMEC only contributed cataract surgical rate of 225, as compared to the national target of 2000, which means that only 11% of total untreated cataract were cured by SMEC. At this rate, SMEC, along with the government and ophthalmologists in Indonesia, still has a lot of homework to do to give more hope to people with blindness.