Al-Shifa Trust steps up efforts to prevent blindness

Islamabad: Al-Shifa Trust has been extending its reach into the country’s outlying regions to combat the rising prevalence of eye diseases, many of which lead to irreversible blindness.

In the last one year, the trust has set up 500 camps in remote areas of the country recording a 30 per cent rise as compared to the number of camps set up in the previous year, said Major General (r) Rehmat Khan, president of the Al-Shifa Trust. During a media briefing, he said there had been 400 general eye screening camps, 40 school screening camps, and 55 surgical eye camps all over Pakistan during the last year.

The primary sponsors of these camps included Qatar Charity, OGDCL, PPL, AFNA, and the Pakistan Army, while the Rupani Foundation has also funded two eye camps, he added. He said the trust is conducting the largest outreach programme in the country, reaching out to the far-flung regions of Gawadar and Pasni as well as the impoverished districts of Gilgit-Baltistan. He said that over a year, 550000 patients were treated in these camps, and thousands of the poor had their vision restored. A sizable number of these patients lacked the means to reach a hospital for treatment, he added.

He noted that the Army’s cooperation with the trust was highly commendable; in numerous regions of South and North Waziristan, they established food and lodging facilities and provided other essentials, enabling the locals to receive general eye care and surgical facilities.

He stressed that the trust is dedicated to battling blindness even though establishing surgical eye camps in certain rural places is a tough job due to a range of issues. Major General (r) Rehmat Khan informed that more than 125,000 schoolchildren had their eyes screened for various eye conditions, and 6000 of them received free glasses and that we consider a thirty per cent rise in the number of eye camps a great success. Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital in Rawalpindi, Kohat, Sukkar, and Muzaffarabad received complex cases from the far-off areas, he said and added that the trust began an outreach project in 1992 and that its free eye camps were established all over Pakistan.

Al-Shifa Centre for Community Ophthalmology is increasing the number of free eye camps in far-flung areas on an annual basis where the majority of the patients lack the resources to access quality healthcare. Eye-related problems are increasing at an alarming pace; therefore, all public and private concerns should boost their efforts to combat this menace, he underlined.