City Gift Recalled

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31255, 30 December 1966, Page 1

City Gift Recalled

“The joy of being able to see again,” is the Christmas message sent this year by Mr R. W. B. Holland, superintendent of a mission hospital in Quetta, Western Pakistan.

Mr and Mrs Holland’s card contains the photograph, shown above, of a Pakistani tribesman wearing his first pair of glasses after a cataract operation at the hospital.

The spectacles were among 100,000 pairs collected in Christchurch in April, 1964, by the Christchurch Lions Club, with the assistance of the Canterbury Milk Vendors’ Association. When the appeal began ~ it was hoped that about 50,000 pairs of spec-

taeles would be collected, but the response far exceeded expectations. The mission at Quetta was started more than 40 years ago by Mr Holland's father, Sir Henry Holland, who was knighted for his work. The hospital provides general medical services, but the proportion of eye work is much greater than in Western countries, perhaps as much as one-third.

In a tape recording sent to New Zealand, Mr Holland said that the cost of a frame in Pakistan was exorbitant, and even the frames without the lenses were worth their weight in gold. The gifts of glasses would be particularly valued by the hospital and by their recipients, he said. After Mr Holland had filled his own hospital’s requirements, the rest of the spectacles were given to other missions along the frontier.