Cataract Surgery

South African President Nelson Mandela will be admitted to hospital for eye surgery this week. The Johannesburg-based Sunday Times quoted Mandela's personal secretary, Mary Mxadana, as saying Mandela would go to the hospital Wednesday for cataract surgery. "It's a simple operation. I'll be in hospital for a day and then I'll be back here answering your questions," Mandela told journalists after meeting with British Trade and Industry Secretary Michael Heseltine.

RANTHAMBORE, India - The operating rooms are dark and gloomy, the power outages far too frequent; the layout is chaotic, and the recruitment of good doctors difficult. Running a rural hospital in India is a labor of love marked by shortages, budget deficits and stiff competition from witch doctors and superstition - a tiny slice of the challenge India faces as it tries to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Rupinder Kaur, executive director of Ranthambore Sevika Hospital in Rajasthan state, strides past villagers huddled on rickety benches into one of the four wards, her yellow scarf racing to keep up. The hospital is at the end of a steep, bad road beside Ranthambore National Park, one of India's most famous tiger reserves.

Your article on managed health care (May 6) does not discuss the additional promise of helping reduce the deficit. By "managing" the elderly to death, Social Security and Medicare payments would be reduced substantially. HENRY W. ABRAMS Encino

An average day in a U.S. hospital cost $4,287 last year. It was less than $1,000 in New Zealand, France, South Africa and Spain. That's one of several cost comparisons reported Tuesday in an annual report by the International Federation of Health Plans, an industry trade group. The London organization surveyed its member companies in 12 different countries to gauge the variation in medical prices. "With the cost and availability of healthcare being an important topic around the world, it's essential that we not only examine the disparities that exist, but also why and how certain gaps do exist," said Tom Sackville, the group's chief executive.

Boxer Antonio Margarito has undergone cataract surgery to repair what was considered a career-threatening injury to his right eye that he suffered in a lopsided loss to Manny Pacquiao in November. Margarito's promoter Bob Arum, concerned about the fighter's future before the May 19 operation, now says a "miracle" turn of events will allow the former welterweight champion to return to sparring in five weeks. Arum also hopes that Margarito can have a rematch with world super-welterweight champion Miguel Cotto later this year.

A laser device that could allow for safer, simpler cataract surgery may be on the market by 1996, a Claremont medical equipment company announced. The probe would enable eye surgeons to remove the cataract through a smaller incision, with less risk of complications than is possible with current equipment, the company claims. IOLAB Corp.

Dr. Charles Kelman, an ophthalmologist who developed an outpatient cataract operation that has helped 100 million people nationwide improve their vision, has died. He was 74. Kelman died Tuesday of lung cancer in Boca Raton, Fla. In 1992, Kelman received the National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush, and he was inducted last month into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.

After months of impasse, Blue Shield of California and UCLA finally have a proposal on the table to settle a contract dispute that's caused worry and confusion for thousands of patients seeking treatment at one of the state's premier medical facilities. But don't expect a breakthrough any time soon. The two sides remain far apart over how much Blue Shield should pay for members' visits to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood and the nearby Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital.

Boxer Antonio Margarito has undergone cataract surgery to repair what was considered a career-threatening injury to his right eye that he suffered in a lopsided loss to Manny Pacquiao in November. Margarito's promoter Bob Arum, concerned about the fighter's future before the May 19 operation, now says a "miracle" turn of events will allow the former welterweight champion to return to sparring in five weeks. Arum also hopes that Margarito can have a rematch with world super-welterweight champion Miguel Cotto later this year.

Joe Garagiola's speed on the basepaths was the stuff of legends. "I'd get to first base and I'd have to beg the guy to hold me on," Garagiola says. "I'd plead with him that my kid was watching at home on TV and I didn't want him to be embarrassed. "When I was coming up, a scout reported that my speed was deceptive. He said I was slower than I looked. " Garagiola is a month from his 85th birthday, and his real speed, the thing that made him a household name in every household that had a television set for the better part of three decades, remains intact.

IT was an affront to my baby boomer self's illusion of eternal youth to experience a growing inability to decipher freeway signs. I was forced to rely upon passengers, including my teenage son's sharp vision (and tongue) for navigating. Finally, I got myself to the eye doctor, anticipating that I would be consigned to wearing glasses for distance vision for the first time in my life. My self-diagnosis was wrong. Through a fancy machine in the doctor's office, I could see the elliptical shadows.

Dr. Charles Kelman, an ophthalmologist who developed an outpatient cataract operation that has helped 100 million people nationwide improve their vision, has died. He was 74. Kelman died Tuesday of lung cancer in Boca Raton, Fla. In 1992, Kelman received the National Medal of Technology from President George H.W. Bush, and he was inducted last month into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.

Last summer, Ann Forbes noticed that she was waving at more people than she ever had before -- people in cars, on the street, down the block. "Everyone and everything that moved," said Forbes, 60. "I'm sure strangers who saw me thought I was half-crazy." In fact she could no longer distinguish faces at a distance.

As an optometrist, I have had experience with most of the local refractive surgeons ["Ethical Lines Blur as Eye Surgery Gains Popularity," May 21]. I know who has the most experience and who is the "weekend warrior." You need only a weekend course to perform many of the refractive procedures (including Lasik). Having worked with approximately a dozen of the finest surgeons in Los Angeles, I have seen the surgeons who have phenomenal results and those who do not. Therefore my patients benefit from my behind-the-scenes knowledge.