It’s sad to see The Henry Holland Christian Eye Hospital, more commonly known as Mission Eye Hospital (MEH), in Shikarpur, once one of the city’s well-known hospitals and a historical landmark, deteriorating. Etched in my memory are the four or five days I spent at MEH taking care of a friend’s aged father who had undergone cataract surgery in early 1953.

The hospital floors were always busy teeming with medical teams and patients; I remember seeing both Dr Henry Holland and his son Dr Ronald Holland making rounds and performing surgeries. And there were hundreds of eye patients; most of them accompanied by their relatives or friends.

Dr Henry, his sons, and several other people — both local and foreign — worked long and hard to alleviate the pain and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in Balochistan and Sindh for decades.

Shikarpur’s Mission Eye Hospital was once famous and everyone was treated there; from sardars and the Khan of Kalat to ordinary villagers

Dr Henry came to the Quetta Mission Hospital (established in 1886) in 1900 when he was barely 25 years old. He soon found himself performing eye surgeries in Quetta, Sibi and Jacobabad. As word spread, patients from Sindh started to make the long trip to the eye camps in Sibi and Jacobabad. Seth Hiranand, a prominent banker in Shikarpur, used to provide financial support to many people who needed financial help for the trip to these eye camps.

In 1909, he visited Dr Henry, probably in Sibi, and asked him to start a clinic in Shikarpur, for which Hiranand promised to give land, material for building structure, and money (for food, lodging, etc) for the patients and those accompanying them.

Dr Henry agreed to the generous proposal, provided the local community, particularly the city’s elite and those holding municipal power, agreed to the project and that he would be allowed to pray and preach outside of his professional setting (he had originally come to Quetta as part of a missionary group).

There was stiff resistance to Hiranand’s idea because of Dr Holland’s association with a Christian mission engaged in spreading the Gospel to Hindus and Muslims. Hiranand threw a challenge to his opponents, Hindus and Muslims alike, to find him a doctor of Dr Holland’s quality and dedication who was not a Christian.

Hiranand won the battle and invited Dr Henry and his team to establish the clinic in Shikarpur for eye operations in January and February every year. The first ‘clinic’ (more of a camp actually) was held in 1910 in very basic conditions.

Significantly, in the 1920s and 1930s, Dr Henry’s pioneering work in ophthalmology attracted many physicians and surgeons from Britain and other countries in Europe, and from the USA, Canada and Australia to work at the clinic. He turned the MEH of Shikarpur into one of the most prominent facilities for eye care in the world.

Hiranand, before his premature death in 1913, set aside a sizeable fund of Rs100, 000 (conservatively equivalent to Rs105 million today) with trustees to maintain the clinic and meet the expenses incurred by Dr Henry, his colleagues and staff. Sadly the trustees mismanaged the endowment and the eye hospital had to depend on personal and institutional donations.

A second landmark for the hospital was the visit of Lord Hugh Dow, governor of Sindh, and his wife Lady Dow in 1946. Thanks to their efforts, many private and public donations followed, helping to rebuild the hospital structure and refurbish its facilities.

The eye hospital in Shikarpur followed a policy of cross-subsidisation: payments from patients who could afford the expenses, while private donations were used to provide free treatment, food and accommodation to the majority with meagre means. This practice was in keeping with the wishes of Hiranand and the spirit of the mission Dr Henry represented.

Dr Henry formally retired in 1948 and handed over the mission hospitals in Quetta and Shikarpur to his son Dr Ronald, but he continued to perform numerous eye surgeries at Shikarpur from 1950 to 1956. In 1958, his autobiography, Frontier Doctor, documenting his long career and achievements, was published. He passed away at the age of 90 in England in 1965.

In his long career, the ‘Frontier Doctor’ treated many thousands of ordinary patients, most of them moderately or severely poor, with great care and often in trying circumstances. He also treated many prominent individuals, among them the Khan of Kalat and the sardars of the Marri and Bugti tribes, Wali of Swat, rulers and sardars in Rajputana, Rajah of Shigar in Baltistan, and the kings of Afghanistan. Several of these individuals gave donations in cash or kind for the mission hospitals.

When requested by the colonial government, Dr Henry managed the health facilities in Balochistan (Quetta and Sibi) and Sindh (Hyderabad) for extended periods.

The monument in Shikarpur was founded, built and managed by individuals committed to alleviating pain in a very difficult environment. What an exhilarating experience it must have been for many patients to be able to see after suffering from near blindness, or to get relief from other acute ailments, and how deeply satisfying it must have been for the doctors to witness their patients being able to see again and resume a ‘normal’ life.

But now an institute which has given sight back to thousands lies in decay. I don’t know how it came to be but the building has clearly been neglected for many years. One wonders when a small group of determined and entrepreneurial people, such as Hiranand and Dr Henry, shall grace Shikarupur again.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 5th, 2016