Al-Shifa Trust will build a primary eye hospital in Haveli Lakha, Okara, with the intention of providing high-quality eye care services to the residents and people from the surrounding areas. In addition to the residents of Haveli Lakha and Depalpur, the facility will also serve the residents of Pakpatan, Sahiwal, and Bahawalnagar, which are neighbouring districts.
Briefing the media, the President of Al-Shifa Trust, Maj. Gen. (Retd) Rehmat Khan said a doctor had donated two acres of land close to the city. The donor will also bear the construction cost, and the trust will provide equipment and expertise and be responsible for managing the facility.
Rehmat Khan said this project would help the people of South Punjab, but the magnitude of the problem demands a full-fledged eye hospital in Multan.
He said that Haveli Lakha Hospital will be operational by the end of this year and that basic eye care hospitals are vital to eradicate blindness.
On this occasion, the project director, Brig. (retd.) Arshad Mahmood shared the details of the trust’s expansion plan and informed us that the extension block in Chakwal Eye Hospital will start functioning next month.
He added that a local family donated Rs 150 million to complete the new block at Chakwal Eye Hospital, which is highly commendable.
The trust is also constructing a hospital in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), for which the government has allotted a piece of prime land near Aga Khan Hospital, accessible to people.
The hospital would be able to treat 150 OPD patients per day and conduct 50 surgeries daily, he added.
The Rupani Foundation Pakistan is helping to construct the first state-of-the-art hospital in the GB, which will cost around Rs 220 million. The foundation will bear half of the cost, while the trust will arrange the remaining costs through donations.
He said we are also awaiting a suitable piece of land from the provincial government to construct a hospital in Quetta. However, he added that we have already started serving the patients in Balochistan and are organising a series of camps. It may be mentioned that the Al-Shifa Trust provides quality eye care services to eighty per cent of patients free of cost.