By M. Sharif Lillah |
Thank you for your support. We’d like to share a little background about LRBT, where we have come and where we are now. With your support we can keep doing the important work that we have started.
“The Layton Rahmatullah Benevolent Trust” was established 23 years ago by Graham Layton and Zaka Rahmatulla, two successful retired businessmen with a mission to eradicate curable blindness.
The prevalence of blindness at that time was 1.8 % of the population. Ironically although 80 % of the blindness was curable, most of it due to cataract, yet due to lack of facilities and the inability of patients to afford the treatment/ surgery the pool of blindness was expanding. WHO rates eye care as one of the 10 most cost effective treatments as a cataract curable blind, once a burden on his family & community, the individual after treatment becomes productive.
From humble beginnings: a mobile clinic in Tando Bago, lower Sindh in November 1985, we have now grown to 15 hospitals & 36 primary eye care units spread over all the 4 provinces. We take immense pride in announcing that in 23 years of our existence we have treated over 14.6 million patients and performed 1.5 million major and minor surgeries successfully.
LRBT is the largest provider of eye care in Pakistan treating 36 % of all OPD patients & conducting 27.4 % of all cataract surgeries. All surgeries and treatment at LRBT are absolutely free. Our credo is, no man, woman or child should go blind simply because he/she cannot afford the treatment. LRBT has touched & improved the lives of more people than any other NGO in Pakistan.
For the last 23 years, since the inception of LRBT, the prevalence of blindness has declined by almost 50 %. This is a great success story and LRBT has been a major contributor in making this happen. This has been recognized by the Government of Pakistan and in August 2005 the Federal Health Minister awarded us a shield as a token of their appreciation.
We are in the process of building 2 new hospitals at Arifwala and Mansehra which will be functional in 2008. The new hospital at Mansehra will replace the temporary hospitals set up one month after the earth quake in October, 2005.
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