KARACHI, June 28: A four-member medical team of the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (Pima) will hold free eye camps in Cameroon and the Gambia over the next two weeks.

Pima president Dr Misbah ul Aziz told a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday that he along with other team members would leave for the African states some time on Thursday night where they would operate upon around 1,000 visually impaired people for implantation of intra ocular lenses (IOL) and perform about 500 cataract surgeries before returning home by July 17.

He said that in view of a rapid increase in visual impairment in Pakistan, Pima had launched a project, Prevention of Blindness Trust (POBT), in 2007 to render free eye-care services to the poor and deserving people both at home and abroad.

Under the project, 662,824 patients, including 348,743 people living in 13 African countries, have been examined while 66,755 people, including 34,201 Africans, have successfully been operated for cataract and implanted intra ocular lenses (IOL) free of cost so far, according to Dr Aziz. He said that in all 1,046 ophthalmologists and surgeons took part in the camps and performed surgeries in the country whereas 307 visited the African countries for the purpose.

He said that the Trust had been able to bear the huge expenses incurred in these activities largely because of voluntary services of doctors and an efficient management of donations. “The Trust has succeeded in bringing down the cost of cataract surgery to the minimum possible level of Rs4,000,” he added.

Dr Aziz said that his team members included PBOT chairman Dr Intzar Hussain Butt, Dr Shayan Shadmani and Dr Usman Saeed.

Dr Butt, who practises in Lahore, said that the Trust had decided to extend its free eye care services to African states because the number of people with visual impairment appeared to be considerably high in that region and most of them were unable to bear the expenses of the treatment that could avert curable blindness.

About a million people in Nigeria alone were waiting for surgical interventions and cataract cure, he said.

Dr Shadmani told journalists that about 1,000 people suffering from blindness would be operated upon in the suburbs of Karachi during 2012-2013. “We perform about 500 surgeries in the Pima-organised surgery camps held in the interior of Sindh each year,” he said.

In reply to a question, he said that the success rate of surgeries and implantation conducted at the eye camps had increased while chances of complications in such cases had decreased considerably.