Pronounced KAT-uh-rakt
Also known as Clouded lens, Motia bind
A cataract is a clouding of the eye's natural lens, which blurs vision gradually as though a clear window had frosted over. It is the commonest cause of avoidable blindness in Pakistan and is corrected by a short operation that replaces the lens.
The lens sits behind the pupil and focuses light onto the retina. It is made of transparent protein, and over decades those proteins clump and discolour. Vision dims and yellows, colours fade, headlights and sunlight scatter into glare, and reading needs more light than it used to. It is painless and usually affects both eyes, though rarely at the same pace — which is why people often discover it by chance on covering one eye.
Age is the main cause, but several things bring it forward, and Pakistan has more than its share of them: strong year-round ultraviolet light, untreated , smoking, eye injury and prolonged use, whether as tablets, as unsupervised eye drops or in skin creams. Cataract accounts for roughly half of all blindness in the country, and almost all of it is reversible — the surgery exists, and the loss comes from it not being reached in time.
There is no drop, tablet or diet that clears a cataract. Early on, a change of spectacles, brighter task lighting and sunglasses outdoors are enough. Surgery is offered when vision interferes with what a person needs to do — driving at night, reading, recognising faces, working — rather than at any fixed level on a chart. It is a day procedure under local anaesthetic, usually about fifteen minutes: the clouded lens is broken up and removed by ultrasound and a clear plastic lens is put in its place. Most people see well within days, and a lens implanted once does not cloud again, though the membrane behind it sometimes thickens and is cleared in minutes with a laser.
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