This $56,750 ROI and BPDAF supported Avoidable Blindness Project addresses our collective ambition to help ‘make blindness history’ in support of WHA, IAPB, RAGPB, Vision 2020 The Right to Sight goals to eliminate causes of avoidable blindness by the year 2020.
Embracing 17 Clubs and four Districts, the majority of funds will restore sight for some 2,136 people in Gambat and elsewhere in the District of Khaipur, Sindh, Pakistan. In addition, it will provide 75 hand held, lens free ophthalmoscopes to competent and trained personnel: 35 Units will be placed in LRBT’s Primary Eye-Care Clinics; 40 will be given to Teachers participating in the Schools early screening programme. The teachers will be trained to identify eye-detectable sight and other life threatening conditions.
$25 will restore the eyesight of a person and return him or her to being a productive member of society. In 1916 Paul Harris stated: "Rotary will continue to be charitable, but it can do more than that; let it remove the cause of that which makes charity necessary". Restoring eyesight will do just that. RIP D.K. Lee asks us to reduce child mortality: A child who is allowed to go blind is twice as likely to die before the age of 13 in a less developed country. We will restore the eyesight of children as well as adults … who will be therefore be better able to support their families.
Pakistan has a Per Capita Income of US$ 77 per month, 2/3rds of the Pakistani population lives around the poverty line; the bulk of their income is spent on food. There are 1.7 Million blind people and another 170,000 become blind every year. 80% of blindness is curable. 60% is due to cataract which can be cured by a simple operation. Another 16.5 million people have impaired vision, 7.6 million due to cataract.
WHO classifies Eye Treatment as being amongst the 10 most cost effective health treatments. Due to limited availability of healthcare facilities and high poverty levels, our cooperating organisation - the LRBT Trust, the largest NGO in Pakistan, will undertake the sugical element. It provides appropriate state-of-art services free of charge thanks to the help of Rotarian donors and others.
In summary the project will:
a) Provide improved free sight care / restoration to some 2,136 low income people in Gambat and other areas.
b) Facilitate the local community to become more self-sufficient in early diagnosis of eye and other health-care conditions detectable through eye-examination.
Timescale: It is anticipated that the project will complete within 5 – 7 months of the formal start date. | 
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