About NRSP

Munawar Memorial Eye Hospital: Reversing Blindness, Restoring Lives

An innovative partnership is bringing much-needed preventive and corrective eye care to children and adults in Chakwal District. [1] Many cases of preventable blindness used to occur because people could not afford to travel the long distances to the hospital, especially since the process of diagnosis, correction and follow-up may require 8-10 visits per patient. Children and the visually impaired must be accompanied by a family member, further adding to the social and financial costs of the treatment.

Since, the urgent need for access to a resident eye-care facility was expressed by many COs in Chakwal District, NRSP adopted the Eye Care Project as a pilot activity. The COs act as a contact point and as a resource base for activities related to village-level eye care, thus linking Munawar Memorial Hospital (MMH) and NRSP. MMH became fully operational at the end of 1998 and has established an active outreach program. Those patients who are bilaterally blind and unable to afford the fees are offered surgery free of cost. Cataract patients are offered surgery at subsidized rates. The components of the Primary Eye Care Project are as follows:

Screening camps are held in the villages, hosted by a CO. Once a patient is selected for cataract surgery, preparation for surgery begins in the screening camp and the patient is provided with transportation to the hospital. Most patients undergo surgery the same afternoon. Return transportation is provided, allowing patients to rejoin their families the same night. The first dressing is carried out in the village next day, and families are given instructions on post-operative care.

Training Workshops for Primary Eye Care Workers Promotion of eye health and prevention of eye disease requires awareness at the grass root level. MMH has initiated workshops to educate Lady Health Workers and Community Health Workers on issues of Primary Eye Care and methods of delivering eye health-awareness. Trainees are introduced to the major blinding diseases, basic eye examination techniques and screening for visual impairment. They are given basic instrument/examination kits to enable them to assess vision in their communities.

School Eye Health Program It was proposed that each school act as a focal point for organizing parents’ groups and for introducing the concept of primary eye care. The shortage of basic eye care services and poor public awareness of the need to protect their vision affects children more profoundly than adults. Refractive errors (i.e. requiring glasses) are a major cause of poor vision in children. Many students with undetected refractive errors cannot perform well in school and some perform so poorly that they decide to leave school. MMH developed the School Eye Health Program to address the needs of children between 9 and 13 years of age. MMH screened children in 18 schools this year. Half of the children in rural areas and one sixth of children in urban schools were found to have undetected vision problems. Refractive errors were found in 5% of those examined.

50 of the school teachers in NRSP’s Community Schools in Chakwal District were taught how to screen children for visual problems. Any children requiring corrective lenses are given them free of cost from a special NRSP philanthropy fund.

Registering the Incurably Blind MMH is in the process of registering all the incurably blind children in the District. The emphasis will be on establishing a school for blind children in Chakwal.

In October 2001 a Field Coordinator was appointed jointly (and paid) by NRSP and Munawar Memorial Hospital. The Co-ordinator’s primary responsibilities are to arrange medical camps (with or without NRSP), to coordinate and arrange school eye-health programs, to disseminate information in CO meetings and to provide progress reports to NRSP and MMH. This position was phased out late in 2002, and the money used to pay two ophthalmic Technicians, who perform the same duties. Both have met the requirements for a BSc in Vision Sciences held at Allama Iqbal Open University.

NRSP organized two Activists’ workshops, in April and August 2001, in which MMH doctors trained activists and provided them with examination kits. The objectives of the workshops are to train Activists to perform ‘vision screening’ of CO members and non-CO members in their villages and to train Activists to identify patients with vision problems during MMH Eye Camps.