Press Release - 7 May 2008

Bringing Light to Lives of Darkness

The light had gone out of Hannifa Akhtar’s life – literally. The 71 year old from Tehsil Gujrat in Pakistan was not only completely housebound unable to walk. She also had to endure blindness caused by cataracts which had left her imprisoned in her own lonely world of darkness. “It was a miserable life!” she recalls. “For years all I’d been longing for was death.”

Twin sisters Asmara and Ammara from the remote northern town of Kohala had never even seen their mother. Both girls had been totally blind from birth.

And then there was five year old Muhammad Osama, blinded in one eye by an accident and at risk of losing the other to infection.

These are just four of the 160 million people world-wide with severe sight problems. Nearly 40 million of them are completely blind. A quarter of all people with severe sight problems are in Asia. And more than nine out of ten of the world’s visually impaired people live in developing countries.

Cataract is the chief cause of blindness in most parts of the world and is predominantly found in older people. This is followed by glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). However, there is a long list of other causes including vitamin deficiency and diabetes.

Many eye diseases are treatable and according to the World Health Organisation three-quarters of all eye conditions are preventable, too. Yet for huge numbers of people with eyesight deficiency treatment is often inaccessible, expensive or both.

It certainly would have been so for people like Hannifa, Asmara, Ammara and Muhammad. Except they were fortunate enough to find a guiding light in the shape of Pakistan’s Al-Shifa Trust and now all four have had their sight restored.

Hanifa was taken to one of Al-Shifa’s five eye hospitals on a special bus and underwent an operation to have her cataracts removed. “They’re angels who brought back my vision,” she says. “They’ve certainly brought the zest back into my life!”

Both little girls can now see for the first time after Al-Shifa’s intervention. Highly skilled surgeons operated on the twins to restore their sight.

As for Muhammad, one eye was so badly damaged it had to be removed but doctors were able to save the sight of his remaining eye.

These are just a handful of the thousands of children and adults helped by Pakistan’s Al-Shifa Trust since it was formed in 1985 by businessmen, civil servants, professionals and retired members of the armed services. Over the past decade alone Al-Shifa surgeons have restored the sight of 1,500 blind patients by corneal grafting or keratoplasty.

Alongside the specialist eye hospital in Rawalpindi, Al Shifa also runs hospitals in Kohat, Sukkur, Quetta and Muzzaffrabad. So far the capital cost of the operation is more than 600 million Rupees (£7 million). Three-quarters of this money has come from public donations and the rest from government grants.

However, it means that three out of four patients in Pakistan are treated entirely free of charge. One in five pay at subsidised rates. Only one in twenty people pay the full cost of treatment.

In 1992 the Al-Shifa was designated by the World Health Organisation as one of its collaborating centres for the prevention of blindness.

Al-Shifa receives considerable financial and professional support from around the world, especially in the UK where organisations like the Bradford-based education and employment charity QED actively raises funds for the trust.

QED is organising a special fund-raising dinner for Al-Shifa to be held at Bradford’s Cedar Court Hotel on 3 November. Among the principal sponsors is the Aagrah chain of restaurants in Yorkshire which will undertake the catering for the venture. More than 400 people are being invited to the high-profile event, which will feature a keynote speaker.

QED founder and chief executive Dr Mohammed Ali OBE said, “This is an important fund-raising event for an organisation which has done so much to help those with eye problems and other conditions in Pakistan. Al-Shifa is currently helping around 1,200 people a day.

“That’s a fantastic record and all of us here want to do whatever we can to continue to support such vital work and help those without hope to see again. Al-Shifa has given thousands a new lease of life.”