Eye care in grassroots pushed to end ‘hakot’

Integrating eye care into public health programs at the local government level will prevent the “hakot system,” the anomalous practice where unsuspecting patients are recruited from the provinces so eye clinics could file claims with PhilHealth, health officials said.

The Department of Health (DOH) on Thursday and Friday held its second summit on the Prevention of Blindness, stressing that one blind person results in two unproductive members in a family because one has to take care of the blind member.

Health Secretary Janette Garin called blindness a “double whammy,” which often leads to poverty and social stigma.

According to a 2012 World Health Organization report, approximately 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, with 39 million of them blind and 246 million with low vision.

Cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness, followed by glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.

In the Philippines, based on last year’s population and the 2002 National Survey of Blindness conducted by the UP National Institute of Health, there were 303,136 persons who were bilaterally blind, 60 percent of them due to cataracts and 14 percent due to uncorrected refractive errors.

Eye clinics were hit by controversy recently after health officials found alleged fraudulent claims amounting to P2 billion submitted to the state-run Philippine Health Insurance Corp. or PhilHealth.

Patients were allegedly made to undergo cataract surgery, even if there was no need for it.

“We should address the problem of cataracts but we should address it in a proper way and treat the people who really need it,” doctor Minguita Padilla, head of the executive staff at the DOH, said at the summit opening at the Heritage Hotel.