May 15, 2007	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 27, 1428

RAWALPINDI, May 14: People living in Azad Kashmir and other adjoining areas will have the facility of specialised eye treatment when the Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital will start its operation in Muzaffarabad by the end of 2009.

The Al-Shifa Trust will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the AJK government next week, as incidence of eye diseases was on the rise in the territory after the 2005 earthquake.

The AJK government has committed to provide land where construction of the hospital will begin early next year and the project will be completed in two years at a cost of Rs250 million.

A senior management team of the Al-Shifa Trust is to visit Muzaffarabad next week to select the site and sign the MoU.

Discover Islam, a renowned non-governmental organisation in Bahrain, will join hands with the Al-Shifa Trust to build the hospital in Azad Kashmir where there is no specialised eye treatment facilities.

The Bahrain-based NGO had provided the earthquake victims with large scale support and was involved in humanitarian activities together with the Al-Shifa Trust.

In the absence of any specialised eye hospital, patients from AJK and the adjoining division of Mansehra were frequently visiting the Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital in Rawalpindi.

Al-Shifa Trust President Lt-Gen (retired) Jahandad Khan had recently returned from a visit to Gulf States where he launched a campaign to create awareness and mobilise support for the trust, a press release issued here said.

The prospects of “Health Tourism” in Pakistan have now brightened as the Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital has started receiving significant a number of complicated eye treatment cases from Afghanistan and the Gulf States.

This number is increasing rapidly due to the fact that the cost of treatment at the Al-Shifa facility is much lower than those available in India, the US or the UK.

After 9/11, a large number of patients from Gulf States who used to go to the US and Europe have now started turning towards the East.

India is earning $5 billion per annum from these health contests. If the Al-Shifa Trust succeeds in getting overseas patients, it will find a valuable source of generating funds in foreign exchange.

Local chapters of “Friends of Al-Shifa” have been established in different locations of the Gulf States.

These have been assigned the task of enlarging the circle of friends and creating awareness about the treatment facilities available at the Al-Shifa Trust Eye hospitals in Rawalpindi, Sukkur and Kohat.