One Pakistani goes blind every five minutes’

[LahoreEstate]

RAWALPINDI: With one person going blind every five seconds, the visually impaired people total five million in Pakistan, said Al-Shifa Trust President Jahan Dad Khan on Thursday at a function. The function was arranged to mark 20 years of eye care services of Al-Shifa Trust’s hospitals. Khan said Al-Shifa Trust eye hospitals had treated over five million people and operated on over 500,000 people during the last 20 years. He said the Trust’s hospital would establish two more modern eye hospitals, one in Quetta and the other in Muzaffarabad. He said work on the Muzaffarabad hospital had already begun. Khan said establishment of surgical consumables manufacturing facility and a national ophthalmologic institute for coordination of human resource development programme of all our five hospitals was also on the cards. According to the Al-Shifa Trust president, the organisation has prepared a Vision 2020 plan focusing on establishing solid income-generating projects to make its all components self-sustainable. He said Al-Shifa Towers would be built by 2013 to ensure self-reliance of the trust’s all components. Vice President of Al-Shifa Trust Saeed Qureshi said that the trust was providing free treatment to poor eye patients, offering mobile ophthalmic services and rehabilitating the visually handicapped people. Al-Shifa Trust’s Executive Director Rizwanullah Asghar said a special facility, Al-Shifa Lighthouse, had been established at the Rawalpindi Al-Shifa Eye Hospital with the help of Universal Service Funds at the initial cost of Rs 25 million. staff report

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg11_2