Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani inaugurated on Saturday the fourth eye hospital of Al-Shifa Trust at Muzaffarabad, the first such facility in eight districts of Azad Kashmir.
The Al-Shifa Trust is already running three state-of-the-art eye hospitals in Rawalpindi, Kohat and Sukkur and with formal inauguration of the facility at Muzaffarabad, the number of its hospital will go up to four, said Al-Shifa Trust President Lieutenant General Hamid Javaid (Retd) while addressing a meeting held to finalise the arrangements for inauguration of the hospital.
The meeting was informed that the 200-bed hospital, built over 6.25 acres of land, has covered area of over 50,000 square feet. It has the capacity to manage about 800 patients of all type of eye diseases and undertake 100 operations daily. Designed to cater to the eye-care needs of the whole region, the construction of the hospital in Muzaffarabad has been completed with the cost Rs 250 million.
The hospital will become a centre of excellence in the region within 10 years, providing postgraduate training to doctors and facilities for applied research to prevent blindness as well as eye care to almost five 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.
The executive director said that in Muzaffarabad a colossal tragedy unleashed by 7.6-magnitude earthquake October 8, 2005 that changed the lives of the people. The Trust provided a 100-bed fully furnished ward and six-table fully furnished operation theatres for earthquake victims where over 700 trauma operations were performed. With over four million population spread over an area of 13,300 square kilometres, Azad Kashmir had not even a single state-of-the-art eye hospital until now.-PR
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