Chinese eye surgeons begin operating on 1,000 blind Pakistanis

[Omar1984]

Chinese eye surgeons begin operating on 1,000 Pakistanis

ISLAMABAD - A team of Chinese Eye Surgeons launched the ‘Bright Light Tour’ to Pakistan on Wednesday by starting operations on patients at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) to restore vision to 1,000 people.

The tour was announced by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao during his visit to Pakistan to mark 60 years of Pak-China friendship. A launch ceremony for the ‘Bright Light Tour Programme’ was held at PIMS which was attended by the Chinsese Deputy Head of Mission to Pakistan Huang Xilian and the Embassy’s Commercial Counsular, Zhou Zhencheng and the Chinese team of eye surgeons as well as top professionals from the medical community.

Speaking on the occasion, Deputy Head of Mission Huang Xilian said, “The ‘Bring Light Tour’ is an important part of our Friendship Year’s celebration. It is a gift from Chinese government to our great neighbour, a symbol of love from Chinese people to Pakistani brothers and sisters and a manifesto of special bonds between our two countries.

The medical team consisting of China’s best ophthalmologists will conduct surgeries in Islamabad and Multan.”

He said the Chinese surgeons came from Beijing’s TongRen Hospital which had a record of 100 percent success in restoring vision in cataract patients, adding he was confident that the ‘Bring Light Tour’ would be one of the highlights in this year’s celebration of China-Pakistan friendship.

Pakistan’s National Blindness Prevention and Control Programme Head Dr Saqlain Gillani said: “Under the programme Chinese surgeons will conduct 1,000 cataract surgeries in Pakistan. As agreed in our discussions with our Chinese counterparts, the surgeries will be performed over a two-year span covering 10 high prevalence districts of Pakistan.

In the first phase 500 surgeries will be performed, 250 each in Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad and Nishter Hospital, Multan. Beginning from Wednesday, the Chinese surgeons will operate on cataract patients till the 11th of December.”

PIMS Executive Director Prof Mehmood Jamal said: “‘The Bright Light Tour’ brings a message of hope and health. The gesture of our Chinese friends symbolises their concern for Pakistani brethren and reflects the deep-rooted ties amongst our people that indeed stand taller than the Himalayas.”

He expressed gratitude to the Embassy of China and the Chinese medical team on behalf of the patients, their families and the doctors of PIMS.

Blindness remains a key public health problem in Pakistan. According to the National survey of Blindness and Low Vision 2002-2004, the prevalence of blindness in Pakistan is 1% with 1.5 million vision-impaired people in the country.




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[pakistanitarzan]

China Zindabaad!

 

[Tangent]

Good News for the Cataract patients...
Let there be light...
Wishing all patients a successful operation and speedy recovery.

 

[katli]

when will they operate the rest of the 180 million 'blind' pakistanis

 

[KS]

Which technology they use for the process ?

 

[Kalyugi Mirza]

That is really so nice...

 

[Al Bhatti]

November 25, 2011

Dubai team gives the gift of sight

Charity group offers vital treatment to people suffering from eye problems in Pakistan

Noor Dubai Foundation, the UAE based charity focused on preventing and treating low vision and curable forms of blindness, continues to provide assistance to those affected by the 2010 floods in Pakistan Sindh Province.

The mobile eye camp that Noor Dubai conducts in Pakistan this time has been set up in the village of Kandiaro, south of the Sindh Province.

Kandiaro, a small town in the southern province of Pakistan, also a major town of the Naushehro Feroz district was affected by flooding of the River Indus. The Naushehro Feroze district has a population of 8.97 million people. This is the second Noor Dubai mobile eye camp in Pakistan since the flood emergency was declared in mid of 2010.

The camp in Kandiaro started early this week and managed to screen more than 2,000 individuals and provide more than 300 cataract and glaucoma surgeries.

Noor Dubai, the latest global charitable initiative from Dubai, was launched by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on September 3, 2008, with the aim of delivering preventative eye care to more than one million people around the world.

Screening patients

The camp is expected to continue until later this week as residents have started arriving from neighbouring villages as well. The Noor Dubai Foundation staff also provide transport buses to and from those villages, making it easier for locals and villagers to attend for the needed eye care.

Ophthalmologists and medical staff from Noor Dubai are travelling to neighbouring villages to conduct post-operative follow-up examinations and eye checks and they will also screen patients unable to travel to the camp in Kandiaro.

Qadi Saeed Al Murooshid, chairman of the board of trustees at the Noor Dubai Foundation, said: "Noor Dubai is committed to providing its services to areas of need especially those that were devastated by natural disasters such as in Pakistan.

"The Kandiaro camp is Noor Dubai's fourth Camp in Pakistan since its inception in 2008, and the medical team provides comprehensive eye care services to the people of Kandiaro and neighbouring villages. Noor Dubai has organised four out-patient clinics where the youngest patient screened was a two-month-old baby and the eldest patient eligible for surgery was 80 years old."

Major health problems

Dr Manal Taryam, CEO of the Foundation said: "According to the statistics provided by the World Health Organisation, Blindness is one of the major health problems in Pakistan draining both its human and economic resources.

"Around 1.5 million people are blind and four per cent of the world's blind people live in Pakistan.

"Approximately 1.2 million of the 1.5 million blind people could be cured if appropriate services for the blind would be more widely distributed."

According to the World Health Organisation, the cataract surgical rate, in Pakistan, is 1,875 per one million people in 2006.

Scope of aid

Since it was established in 2008, Noor Dubai has so far restored the vision of more than 5.8 million people in Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen, Chad, Niger, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Mali, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The Foundation has performed cataract surgeries for more than 10,000 individuals, and provided medication and corrective eye wear to more than 90,000 people through the eye camps. Noor Dubai has funded, in 2008 and 2009, the fight against river blindness and other causes of preventable vision loss in Africa.

The group also works with partners and other NGOs. Together, they have led a series of highly successful free cataract camps which have focused on screening, diagnostics and corrective treatment across South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

gulfnews : Dubai team gives the gift of sight

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China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and some other countries, all help Pakistan whenever Pakistan is in dire need for someone to stand besides her. These countries along with some other countries are a true picture of what "A friend in need is a friend indeed' means.

But, all this help and aid has it's own limit. Since when can they go on helping us every time when the sama problems are faced year after year?

And our politicians are all happy with all this as they don't care for the public and have left them in bad conditions so as to get an image of a suffering population and hence more aid coming in for "them".