In every three minutes a Pakistani becomes blind

Rawalpindi:Every three minutes a person develops eye disease in Pakistan while a very small number has access to affordable and quality health services, president of a hospital said.
Spike in eye diseases has now reached to the proportions of epidemic raising new challenges, he said.

Speaking at an in-house seminar, Lieutenant General (Retd) Hamid Javaid, President Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospitals said one hundred and seventy thousand people loses sight while the total number of the blind in Pakistan is exceeding three million.Majority in Pakistan have curable blindness, 80 per cent of blindness is avoidable through either prevention or treatment.

He informed that so far we have provided eye-care facilities to six million people through four hospitals in Rawalpindi, Sukkur, Kohat, and Muzaffarabad.Here at Al-Shifa, we provide facilities that match the facilities in the state-of-the-art hospitals in America and India, Hamid Javaid said.

He informed that we are imparting training to one hundred paramedics, arranging specialisation for twenty doctors while providing free treatment to half a million people every year.

Prevention and control of blindness by providing standard and sustainable eye care services which are accessible to all regardless of gender, race, colour or religion is our basic aim.

Blindness is one of the major health problems in Pakistan draining both its human and economic resources, said Hamid Javaid, adding that Pakistan needs more assistance to make medical treatment available to the many people suffering from optical diseases.