Cousin marriages main reason behind sight problems in infants

Lahore : President Al-Shifa Trust Lt. Gen (Retd) Hamid Javed on Friday said that almost two million people were prone to eye related diseases in Pakistan out of then eighty percent could be cured with timely intervention.

He said that one of the major obstacle in providing eye care to the needy is lack of the required facilities.

Briefing a group of senior journalists and columnists he said that Al-Shifa is trying best to serve as many patients as possible with focus on children.

Hamid Javed informed that ground breaking ceremony for the construction of a children eye hospital has already been performed by the President Mamnoon Hussain recently and that the project would be completed in next two years.

We have already started training doctors and support staff so that the largest children eye hospital in this region can serve masses in the best possible way.

Responding to questions, he said that Al-Shifa has taken new initiative for getting eye donations from the US and Canada. “Presently, around 60 operations for eye transplant are being conducted per month and we plan to enhance the number of transplants to 100 in the next six months” he maintained.

An eye transplant cost about Rs 120,000 however, Al-Shifa categorized eye transplant operations into three groups. We try to conduct 20 eye transplants free of cost while next 20 are subsidized while 20 donations are provided to those people can bear full dues” he added.

He further said that Al-Shifa has also planned to set up small eye treatment units in remote areas to provide state of the art eye treatment facilities.

At the occasion, Director Al-Shifa Trust Brigadier (Retd) Rizwan Asghar said that cousin marriage was the main reason for high rate of eye diseases among newly born.

He said that founder of the trust Late Jahandad Khan envisioned a specialised eye hospital for children in Pakistan which will become a reality within two years. It is Rs 01 billion project and the required amount has been donated by local philanthropists.

It is was easy to cure eye disease in childhood rather to wait that result in complications, he said.