Sixty percent of the children die within two years of blindness

Lahore: Pakistan has a children population of about 90 million out of which 1.5 million children are blind. Many children don’t know they have a vision problem because they assume they see the way everyone around them sees, a seminar was told on Friday.

Vision problems affect millions of primary school children nationwide while sixty percent of the children die within two years of blindness, an issue that must be addressed urgently by all the stakeholders, said Lt Gen (Retd) Hamid Javaid, President Al Shifa Trust while speaking at an awareness seminar titled, “Child Eye Health Care and Prevention of Child Blindness.”

He informed the participants that a state of the art and first of its kind Specialized Children Eye Hospital in Pakistan is being planned and construction would start by the end of this year.  We have been providing quality eye health care to the underprivileged children free of cost, he added.

Speaking at the seminar, Dr. Sorath Noorani discussed the existing Child Eye Health Care Facilities at Al Shifa Trust Eye Hospital Rawalpindi and highlighted the efforts being done to promote child eye health care.

She said that around 40,000 children visit Shifa’s OPD annually with various visual disorders while the hospital has started a screening program for Retinopathy of Prematurity in all the major hospitals of Rawalpindi and Islamabad and plans to expand it to all other hospitals of the country.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof. Dr. Tayyab Afghani explained various visual disorders in children while WHO representative Dr. Zareef ud Din Khan assured WHO’s continued support for the hospital.

Acknowledging the efforts and services of Al Shifa Trust, Pakistan State Oil donated Rupees three million for purchase of equipment to fight preventable child blindness.

The specialised children eye hospital will go a long way in changing the lives of thousands of children and will help them see the colours of life.