AST opens Haveli Lakha eye hospital, expanding specialist care in South Punjab

RAWALPINDI, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Apr, 2026) Al-Shifa Trust (AST) has started patient services at its newly built eye hospital in Haveli Lakha, Okara, ahead of its formal inauguration scheduled for Monday, May 4, extending specialist eye care to five underserved districts in South Punjab.

According to Al-Shifa Trust, built on two acres of donated land at a cost of Rs162 million, including Rs 122 million for construction and Rs 40 million for medical equipment, the hospital will serve patients from Haveli Lakha, Depalpur, Pakpattan, Sahiwal and Bahawalnagar, areas that have long lacked specialized eye treatment facilities.

The project was completed through donations that helped broaden access to quality eye care in underserved communities.

Designed to cater to up to 250 outdoor and indoor patients daily, the facility comes at a time when the need for specialist eye treatment in the region remains acute.

More than 1.8 million people in South Punjab are living with blindness, around 85 per cent of which is considered avoidable. Nearly half of all blindness cases are linked to cataracts, a condition largely treatable through routine surgery, but rural communities continue to face shortages of trained staff and modern surgical facilities.

The trust said Pakistan’s blindness rate had declined from 1.78 per cent in 1990 to around 0.5 per cent, partly due to wider access to cataract surgery and earlier diagnosis, although rising treatment costs and limited facilities remain major challenges.

For daily-wage families in the Okara and Sahiwal belt, the new hospital is expected to ease the burden of traveling to Lahore or Multan for basic eye procedures, reducing both travel time and expenses.

With the Haveli Lakha facility now operational, Al-Shifa Trust’s network has expanded to seven hospitals in Rawalpindi, Sukkur, Kohat, Muzaffarabad, Chakwal, Gilgit and Haveli Lakha. The trust has also organised more than 15,000 screening and surgical camps in remote areas, while construction on its eighth hospital has begun in Lahore.

Last year, the trust screened more than 175,000 schoolchildren through over 550 free eye camps. It aims to reach more than two million patients and perform 120,000 surgeries in the coming year, with nearly 80 to 90 per cent of patients continuing to receive treatment free of charge.