Al-Shifa Trust to establish eye hospital in Chakwal

Rawalpindi : Secondary level hospitals are needed to eradicate blindness from the country, therefore, the management of Al-Shifa Trust has decided to establish an eye hospital in the district of Chakwal at a cost of Rs250 million.

This was stated by President of Al-Shifa Trust Lt Gen (R) Hamid Javaid while he was talking to a group of journalists after a fundraising event. He said the hospital in Chakwal would be equipped with latest facilities and would have a capacity of providing treatment to 250 outdoor patients (ODP) per day.

A piece of 18-kanal land has been acquired while designing and construction details of the hospital have been finalized, he said and added the project would be completed in two years while its foundation stone will be laid soon after Ramazan.

The planned hospital in Chakwal will have the capacity of conducting 50 surgeries per day and it will have four clinics along with male and female wards. The poor will get quality eye care services free of cost at the hospital while expenses would be met through donations, he said.

He added that the eye hospital in Chakwal, the first project of the trust at district level will not only help locals in getting treatment at their doorstep but also help reduce the load on Rawalpindi hospital. The trust is planning to establish more hospitals in the smaller cities to eradicate blindness and to reduce the burden on the base hospital in Rawalpindi, said Hamid Javaid.

It is pertinent to mention that the Al-Shifa Trust is already running four world-class hospitals at Sukkur, Kohat, Muzaffarabad, and Rawal-pindi.

It has treated 8,922,174 patients during the last 28 years, conducted 691,075 surgeries and has managed 650 corneal transplants per year. The number of patients screened in camps stands at 1,880,562 while 1,854,910 school going children have also been examined.