Free Eye Camp Updates From Lahore, Pakistan

Lahore is the most historic and populous city of Pakistan. There are 945000 blind people in Punjab which is the the most populous province of the country. AMWT has started series of free eye camps for the different areas of Punjab where 1000 blind people will receive free cataract surgeries.This year, in total we are targeting 5000 blind people whereas 1000 blind people will be targeted from each province including Kashmir. The three days Free Eye Camp in Lahore on 10^th, 11^th and 12^th of February 2012 was of great success. It took place on three different areas; Ghaziabad, Salamatpura and Baghbanpura respectively to target as many blind people as possible. The patients were targeted from the deprived areas of Lahore.

The camps were very busy and elderly people were provided with free transport services as well. There

Medical teams, 5 doctors and 10 paramedical staff, visited camps where they screened out the cataract patients. After completing the eye screening, all cataract patients were transported at Al Mustafa Medical Centre Lahore, where operation theatre was set up to carryout the surgeries. 100 surgeries has been carried out successfully and 2000 people received free eye treatment. All kind of medical facilities including eye check up, medicines, glasses, cataract surgeries and post surgery treatment were provided free of cost. Also, free meal and transport facilities were provided to the elderly patients.

AMWT is thankful to all of its donors for their kind contribution for this good cause and hoping for their support in future for eye camps in other cities.

Project Manager : Tajjamul Gurmani

Updates from Free Eye Camp Karachi, Pakistan

Al Mustafa is fighting against blindness in Pakistan and breaking the poverty-blindness cycle since 1985. AMWT is targeting 5000 blind people during 2012 in Pakistan. AMWT has arranged two days free eye camps on 18^th and 19^th of February at Al Mustafa medical centre Gulshan e Iqbal Karachi this year.


Eye surgeries and treatments were provided free of cost to the deserving patients. The camp was fully equipped with all required medical equipments from lenses to medicines, surgery equipment to glasses etc.

 Also disposable surgery items like syringes, gloves, cotton, cloth pads and other relevant items required for operation theatre were available in ample quantity. A team of 5 doctors and 10 paramedical staff along the management team of AMWT participated in two days camps

 It’s been observed that alike previous years, a huge number of patients visited the camps. Women and elderly people were in higher numbers among the visitors. This clearly shows that blindness prevails more among the elderly people and women. Patients have been also transported from the rural areas to the camps. Initially the screening tests were conducted and patients who needed cataract surgery were admitted in camp. Free operations were carried out by our volunteer surgeons. 50 surgeries have been carried out in two days camps. Apart from that, over 1000 people received free eye treatment and glasses. After the operation, some patients were taken for a day or so where they had been given free accommodation and food. Moreover, our free ambulance service helped in transporting the patients to their homes.

Alhamdulillah AMWT managed to arrange the camp successfully in Karachi. The cost of one eye surgery was £35 and each camp arranged was of £1000. This was not possible to achieve this project without the contributions of AMWT’s kind donors and sister organisations. We are grateful for all of our generous donors to enable us to help the blind people to see the world again with their own eyes.

Project Manager: Ahmed Raza, Karachi, Pakistan

Fighting Against Blindness in Africa:Free Eye Camps For Ethiopia



Waiting for their turn

According to World Health Organization estimates Africa shares 19 per cent of the world’s blindness. There are 26.3 million people visually impaired in Africa majority of them is aged over 50 years. Furthermore, among 26.3 million there are 20.4 million with low vision and estimated to be blind, whereas two third of them are women. Most of the cases of blindness in the African Region are from avoidable causes such as cataract (50%), glaucoma (15%), corneal opacities (10%), trachoma (6.8%), childhood blindness (5.3%) and onchocerciasis (4%).

Unfortunately, the state of eye care in Africa stands at alarming levels comparative to the rest of the world. The main affected countries from the region are Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Gambia. There are various factors playing significant role to aggravate the particular disease in the region. Such as, poor practitioner-to-patient ratios, total absence of personnel eye-care, inadequate health facilities, and poor state funding for health, lack of educational programmes including higher population rate.

 Ethiopia is the most affected country in the region with a population of 91 million, which is the second-most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to ORBIS International, 1.2 million Ethiopians are blind and 2.8 million have low vision. Eye care services are extremely limited throughout the country as there are only 95 ophthalmologists available for the population of 91million, particularly in rural areas there is no eye care service available. Even if available ophthalmologists work for 12 hours a day taking 2 hours time for single operation, they would be able to carry out 576 surgeries. The progress to fight against the blindness in the region would be extremely slow in that pace.

Moreover, low per capita income which is US$380 in FY 2010(GNI, Atlas Method) also prevents the masses to have access to the available health facilities. Low income among the population changes the priority order like they are more worried about for their food not health conditions. According to the recent data the budget allocation for the health sector in Ethiopia is US$144 million; health expenditures per capita are estimated at US$4.50, compared with US$10 on average in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2000 the country counted one hospital bed per 4,900 population and more than 27,000 people per primary health care facility.  However, health care is disproportionately available in urban centres; in rural areas where the vast majority of the population resides, access to health care varies from limited to non-existent. Also the literacy rate in Ethiopia is only 35.9 which results in lack of awareness among people regarding hygiene, sanitation and nutrition and ultimately leads to potentially devastating diseases such as blindness.

African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) is a bigger partnership programme including 19 participating countries with effective and active involvement of the Ministries of Health and their affected communities, several international and local NGDOs, the private sector (Merck & Co., Inc.), donor countries and UN agencies.

The World Bank is the Fiscal Agent of the Programme and WHO is the Executing Agency of the Programme. The Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin (CDTI) is the delivery strategy of APOC. It empowers local communities to fight river blindness in their own villages, relieving suffering and slowing transmission. It has brought substantial achievements for onchocerciasis control in Africa. Using this approach over 68.4 million people were receiving regular treatment for onchocerciasis by end-2009, close to one million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) have been averted and the prevalence of infection has reduced by about 73% compared with pre-APOC levels. The programme which has been extended until 2015 intends to treat over 90 million people annually in 19 countries, protecting 115 million of population which is at risk of the blindness, and to prevent over 40,000 cases of blindness every year.

In addition to that there are many NGOs doing their best for overcoming blindness by providing support to local hospitals in terms of equipment, medicines, helping in setting up screening programmes to identify those people who are at risk and those who need treatment, developing eye treatment centres, training eye doctors.

However there is still high demand of the volunteer doctors to serve the region and provide cost affective eye care to the poor masses of the region. Also, pharmaceutical companies can play significant part to fight against the blindness by providing free medicines and cataract lenses.

AMWT is actively working for less fortunate and needy humanity around the globe for over 25 years. AMWT organizes free medical camps annually in various countries including Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangladesh, Gambia and Nigeria, Ethiopia and Somalia. AMWT has acknowledged the blindness problem in Ethiopia and taken the initiatives to arrange free eye camps for the rural community of the affected parts of the country. The reason of focusing Ethiopia is the highest prevalence of blindness comparative to other East African countries. Whereas, recent drought has deteriorated the health conditions in the region. AMWT strongly believes that by providing free eye care at the doorstep of rural masses would break the poverty blindness cycle.

The team of 50 doctors along the trained paramedical doctors would be coming from Pakistan where AMWT has network of 13 hospitals. Each medical camp will be fully equipped to handle up to 4,000 patients. It would cost £1000 to setup one free eye camp whereas one eye surgery will cost £35. AMWT is targeting 10000 blind people in Ethiopia during 2012. However; we are still looking for new partners and major donors to support us for fighting against blindness in Ethiopia.

By: Anam Jawad Lateef       
       Ikhlaq Hussain

Let's Break The Poverty Blindness Cycle

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors. According to World Health Organization (WHO), 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 246 million have low vision and 39 million are blind. It is estimated that 90% of the world's visually impaired are located in developing countries. Furthermore, blindness is very high in South Asian region, there are 15 million blind people reside in India, with an additional 52 million visually impaired. Similarly, 1.54 million people are estimated blind in Pakistan and 800,000 in Bangladesh. Whereas, in Africa there are 1.2 million Ethiopia are blind and 1 million adults are blind in Nigeria. Therefore, regional statistics indicates that 90% of blindness is located in developing countries.

The rural-urban distribution indicates that rural areas contain higher numbers of blindness then urban areas. The main reason behind the higher number of blindness among rural inhabitants could be urban biased policies by the central governments of the developing world.  As Michael Lipton (1976) explains in his book ‘’Why Poor Stays Poor’’ is because central governments don’t allocate enough budget for rural areas due to elite pressure, those reside in urban areas of developing countries. Therefore, imbalance exists in all walks of life from education to health facilities among rural and urban inhabitants of the developing countries, where blindness is on rise. Thus, poor masses can not afford the facilities due to low income and lack of health facilities in the area. Consequently, they are forced to live as blind and stay away from education and employment, which turns into poverty-blindness cycle. This cycle is continuing situation whereby poor families entrapped in poverty for generations and lose the opportunity to make a better life.                                                                              

It has also been observed that females have a significantly higher risk of having visual impairment than males. According to Women’s Eye Health Task Force (WEHTF), nearly two out of three people who are blind are women. This is because many eye problems are age related and women live longer than men, so they experience more age-related diseases. Moreover, some eye diseases are intrinsically more common in women like dry eye syndrome and other autoimmune diseases.

There are various polices have been proposed by the experts however, to reduce visual impairment, strategies targeting poor people are required on urgent basses. The research carried out by WHO indicates that globally, 80% of all visual impairment can be cured. There are number of tools has been proposed and implemented by national and international institutions in developing countries with the aid of NGOs and local bodies. Areas of progress over the last 20 years include governments establishing national programmes to prevent and control visual impairment, focus on provision of eye care services that are affordable and of high quality and massive awareness campaigns including school based education. This helping the poor blind masses to see the world with their own eyes and acquiring higher education, getting into work and ultimately, leading towards better living. Not only this, it will also contribute to increase the literacy and income rates at national level and bring out the country from this deprivation.

Al-Mustafa Welfare Trust (AMWT) has played vital role to fight against blindness in Pakistan since 1985. It has helped around 50,000 people to have free eye surgeries, most were women and elderly people. There are 1.5 million people got minor treatments through free eye camps.

AMWT have got 100 registered eye surgeons and well trained paramedical staff who are working on voluntarily basses every year at free eye camps. The main objective of AMWT free eye camps is to provide free eye care at the door step of the poor rural masses who can not afford the treatment due to low income and lack of health facilities and awareness.

In Feb-March 2012, AMWT aims to arrange approximately 167 free eye camps in various rural areas of all provinces of Pakistan. These camps will target 5000 blind people for free surgery where 250500 people will receive minor treatments and eye care.

It just costs £35 to provide free surgery to one blind person, whereas £1000 costs to set up one fully equipped free eye camp. AMWT can not accomplish this huge project without the generous support of its kind donors and sister organisations. Your generous contribution will enable to many blind people to see the world again with their own eyes. Free surgery will enable them to participate in daily activities and to join the prayers at masjid and to read the Quran. As Quran says that ‘’one who saves the life of one person is like to save the entire humanity’’. Therefore we would require your support to save the lives of blind people from poor countries.

By: Anam Jawad Lateef