Purchasing contact lenses online has been the subject of continued media scrutiny culminating in a face-off between representatives of the BCLA and website Getlenses.co.uk on national radio.
It follows news of a contact lens wearer who lost her eye after developing the Fusarium eye infection (News 08.02.13) and another case where a woman had her cornea removed (The Sun, Contact lens fungus ate my eye too, February 11). Further coverage in The Sun documented two other patients who experienced problems after buying CLs online last week.
Ashley Mealor, marketing director of Getlenses.co.uk, and BCLA president Dr Catharine Chisholm both featured on BBC Radio 4's You &Yours programme on February 8. They discussed the case of a patient who had purchased CLs from an unnamed online retailer that made her eyes sore and dry, who was said to have woken up one day and been unable to go outside because it was so bright. She was told by a practitioner that the lens had 'burnt the sphere' of her eye and symptoms have continued for two years since.
The CLs in question had not been purchased from Getlenses.co.uk, it was stressed.
Mealor told listeners as long as patients bought replacement lenses prescribed by the optician then it was perfectly safe to buy them online.
He added: 'You can actually decide that you don't want to send us your prescription or talk to an optician and that's really because customers said "look, we don't want the hassle of having to send the prescription through to you".
'From interviewing about 25 customers this week we have found none of them had not been to their optician in the last two years, and it's really about working with opticians and making sure that people go to the opticians on a regular basis.'
The company's patients can choose to buy CLs without a prescription from sister site in the Netherlands, Getlenses.nl.
In response, Dr Chisholm stressed it was not safe to buy contact lenses without a prescription. 'You must always buy based on a valid prescription that's within date because the eye changes, and it may be that some newer lenses are more suitable for your eyes and your eye care practitioner needs to see the lens on your eye to know that it's working and needs to follow it up over time,' she told the programme.
She added that buying from the internet could be okay, but that it discouraged people to seek eye care every 6-12 months.