Asia’s biggest children eye hospital to be functional by January

Rawalpindi:Asia's biggest children eye hospital is scheduled to be functional by January 2021 with a capacity of treating one 150,000 children annually, a leading eye trust announced Monday.

The Rs1 billion project is in final stage at the premises of Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital Rawalpindi, which will have a capacity to cater to the need of 500 patients per day at its outpatient department, said President Al-Shifa Trust Major General (r) Rehmat Khan.

Talking to media men here, he said that our data regarding school screening shows that 20 per cent of children bear some sort of eye problems while five per cent of them have severe eye disorders.

He said that the trust is constructing the first children eye hospital in the country with a capacity of accommodating 500 OPD patients per day and fifty complicated surgeries would be performed in a day. This will be the biggest hospital in Asia as far as the capacity is concerned for which we are thankful to the philanthropists and the donors, he added.

Gen Rehmat Khan said that we have 13 eye specialist doctors while the required strength is 16. All the necessary equipment has been purchased and the children’s hospital has been linked with the operation rooms of the main hospital.

He said that eye screening for the children should be mandatory as lack of awareness create a lot of problems in the children as they grow. Babies should be able to see in terms of focusing ability, colour vision and depth perception by six months of age therefore they should have their first comprehensive eye exam at six months of age, then their eyes should be examined at the age of three years and just before they enter the school as our future is linked to children, he said.

Premature babies should be examined soon after birth so that timely action could be taken to prevent any problem, he said. He added that school-going children should have an eye exam at least every two years if no vision correction is required. Children who need eyeglasses should be examined annually or as recommended by the eye doctor, he said.

So far we have treated more than six million patients in the OPDs and more than 600,000 surgeries have been performed in the hospitals run by the trust at Rawalpindi, Kohat, Sukkar and Muzafarabad, he said.