Islamabad-Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital would establish 50 surgical camps all over the country while the outreach programme will continue throughout the year.
This was stated by President Al-Shifa Trust Lt Gen (R) Hamid Javed while inaugurating eye camp at Lakot Tehsil Murree, said a press release issued here on Monday.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony he said that out of the box solutions are needed to deal with the menace of blindness. He informed that the trust has established this highly equipped surgical camp at the doorstep of the poor patients. He said that with this initiative around 5000 cataract surgeries will be conducted at an annual cost of 80 million rupees. He said that aim of the camp was to help the local community to provide quality eye care service in the remote areas and eliminate avoidable blindness.
At the occasion, Dr Tariq Usman, General Manager of the Al-Shifa Centre for Community Ophthalmology said that free eye camps will be arranged in those remote areas where the patients had lack of access and resources for quality medical facilities. Providing free of cost preventive and curative eye care service to the unreached patients in the remote regions with the help of local communities is our aim to stop the spread of preventable blindness, he added.
An advance party was moved to the camp location with complete mobile hospital and the state-of-the-art electro-medical equipment, the statement added. Field operation theatre along with male and female wards, testing laboratory and the OPD with complete investigation facilities was also established.
On the first day, 43 cataract surgeries were conducted in which 24 were male patients and the rest were female while 18 cases of surgery were postponed temporarily due to high blood pressure, chest infection, diabetes and other complications. Free spectacles were also given to the patients and a medical team visited the camp site for the first follow up session for postoperative patients. The medical team conducted the eye examination and provided advice as well as necessary medicines. The second follow up visit has been scheduled on August 3.
