15 January 2004	Thursday	22 Ziqa'ad 1424

KARACHI, Jan 14: The British Deputy High Commissioner in Karachi, David Pearey, has lauded the Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust (LRBT) for its 'noble cause' of providing free and comprehensive start-of-art eye care to the poor and destitute.

Mr Pearey said this while presenting Rs0.7 million cheque to LRBT chairman Khawaja Zafar Hassan on Wednesday. He said an amount of Rs1.4 million was raised by organizing amateur theatres for charity with support of the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. The other half of Rs1.4 million would be given to the Citizens Educational Foundation in the next week, he added.

Mr Zafar expressed his sincere thanks to the British Deputy High Commissioner for his continued support to LRBT's efforts. He said that the LRBT was set up as free eye care in 1985 by Gordon Graham Layton and Zaka Rahmatulla to alleviate pain and suffering among the poor and sick. He said the LRBT was a charitable trust that had grown to a chain of nine eye hospitals spread over all four provinces, while another hospital was also under construction in Shahpur near Sargodha.

The LRBT chairman said that since its inception, the Trust had treated 8.6 million patients and performed 48,000 major and 360,000 minor eye surgeries. He said blindness was one of the most common ailments in the country, and much of it was preventable or curable with right kind of treatment. On an average, around 300,000 persons in the country lose their sight every year, he added.

He said that the LRBT was performing over 55,000 cataract surgeries every year on an average, which account for about 25 per cent of all cataract surgeries performed in the country. Mr Zafar said LRBT's doctor successfully performed radial optic neurotomy surgery for the first time in the country at its hospital in Karachi. -APP/PPI