Singapore honors ReNu investigators

Monday, 10 July 2006

The Singapore Minister of Health has honored a team of doctors from that country who were the first to alert the public to the link between Bausch & Lomb’s ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution and the fungal infection Fusarium keratitis. The doctors were given the Minister of Health Award for their vigilance and courage in taking on a multinational corporation. Doctors at the Singapore National Eye Center (SNEC) began to notice an increase of Fusarium keratitis symptoms among users of MoistureLoc in the Fall of 2005. After an investigation suggested a link between MoistureLoc and the outbreak, authorities in Singapore issued a public health advisory for the contact lens solution in February 2006—three months before Bausch & Lomb issued a worldwide ReNu recall. Officials say that the doctors’ quick response to the increase in Fusarium keratitis symptoms minimized the health consequences of the outbreak in Singapore. “I think it was speed that saved a lot of patients,” says SNEC deputy director Donald Tan. “In the U.S., one-third of the patients actually required corneal transplants. So it’s very severe, and a lot of it is because of delayed diagnosis. For us, we have five transplants out of 68 cases.... They had better visual outcomes because we got into it earlier.”