4th hospital to start functioning this month

The Al-Shifa Trust, which is already running three state-of-the-art eye hospitals in Rawalpindi, Kohat and Sukkur, is set to formally commission its fourth eye hospital at Muzaffarabad, the first such facility in eight districts of Azad Kashmir, later this month.

This piece of information was shared by the president of Al-Shifa Trust Lieutenant General (r) Hamid Javaid, during a meeting that he chaired here on Sunday to review arrangements for commissioning of the hospital.

The executive director Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital Brigadier (r) Rizwan Ullah Asghar, who coordinates functioning of all hospitals of the Trust, told the meeting that the hospital would formally be inaugurated by the end of March to provide specialised eye-care services to the people of Azad Kashmir as well as Gilgit-Baltistan.

Built over 50 kanals of land, the 200-bed hospital has a covered area of over 50,000 square feet. It has the capacity to manage about 800 patients with all types of eye diseases and undertake 100 operations daily. Designed to cater for eye-care needs of the whole region, the construction of the Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital in Muzaffarabad has been completed at a cost of Rs250 million.

“Within 10 years, it will become a centre of excellence in the region, providing postgraduate training to doctors and facilities for applied research to prevent blindness as well as to provide eye care to almost 5 million people,” the meeting was told. It will serve as a base hospital for multiple vision centres in remote areas of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Rizwan Ullah Asghar recollected the October 8, 2005 earthquake in Muzaffarabad. “Rising to the occasion, the Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital, Rawalpindi, provided a 100-bed fully-furnished ward and six-table fully furnished operation theatre for earthquake victims where over 700 trauma operations were performed. Since then, life in Azad Kashmir is sluggishly returning to normal but the collapse of infrastructure has resulted in marked increase in serious health problems, including blindness,” he said.