PESHAWAR, Dec 18: NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah has stressed the need of making concrete efforts by all concerned to improve and maintain the quality of eye care services at district and sub-divisional level.

This, he remarked, was necessary to develop confidence of the people in these services, and that it would reduce the unnecessary burden on tertiary hospitals.

He said speaking at the inaugural ceremony of a two-day regional workshop on “Vision 2020” held under the auspices of International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) here on Thursday.

The workshop being participated by delegates from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and representatives of a number of international agencies was also addressed by Dr Para Raja Sigaram of WHO and Dr Clay Gilbert, a renowned specialist in child ophthalmology.

Talking about the gravity of the problem, the governor said, the fact that global blindness is very rapidly increasing and the presence of 90 per cent of the world’s blind in developing countries is really a matter of great concern.

In fact, people in the developing world are more vulnerable to blindness at the early age, and the countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region are amongst the worst affected, he said.