Comment: Work to be done on plano safety

A few phone calls by Optician to pharmacies this week proves that an awareness campaign on supervision of plano contact lens sales from the National Pharmacy Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain is very much needed.

None of the pharmacies contacted was aware that supervision of plano lens sales by a registered optometrist, contact lens optician or doctor was a requirement of the Opticians Act.

Both the pharmaceutical bodies have agreed to work with the General Optical Council to raise awareness of the issue which the GOC describes as high on its agenda. It seems that only now is the UK catching up with other major markets worldwide in policing the plano lens situation, having effectively failed to fully plug the loophole allowing sales of these lenses without a prescription. The US, on the other hand, has taken a tough stance through its Federal Trade Commission. In a recent case, two US marketers of non-corrective, cosmetic contact lenses were fined and prohibited from selling contact lenses without obtaining prescriptions or verifying prescriptions from the prescribers.