Al-Shifa Trust President Lt-Gen (retd) Jahandad Khan presided over the meeting.
Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital, Rawalpindi, Executive Director Brig (retd) Rizwanullah Asghar told the meeting that the hospital would be ready to provide specialised eye-care services to the people of Azad Kashmir as well as Gilgit-Baltistan.
He informed the meeting that the 200-bed hospital, built on 6.2 acres, has the capacity to manage about 800 patients of eye diseases and to undertake 100 surgeries daily. The hospital has been completed at a total cost of Rs250 million.
“Within 10 years, it will become a centre of excellence in the region, providing postgraduate training to doctors, eye care to almost five million people and facilities to applied research for prevention of blindness,” Asghar informed the meeting.
Giving the background of the project, the executive director told the meeting that Muzaffarabad is a scenic tourist destination and administrative capital of Azad Kashmir. But the tragedy unleashed by the earthquake on October 8, 2005 changed the lives of the people as it destroyed almost everything. “Rising to the occasion, Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital provided a 100-bed fully furnished ward and operation theatre for earthquake victims where over 700 trauma cases were handled. Since then, life in Azad Kashmir is sluggishly returning to normal but the collapse of infrastructure has resulted in a marked increase in serious health problems, including blindness,” he said.
With over four million population spread over an area of 13,300 square kilometres, Azad Kashmir has not even a single modern eye hospital until now.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2010.
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