Woman of vision: A life spent preventing blindness in Pakistan

TAXILA: In the archaeological city of Taxila, some 32 kilometers northwest of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, lives an eye doctor of Indian origin, the country’s first female ophthalmologist, who has saved hundreds of thousands of people from visual impairment and continues her crusade against blindness despite crossing her retirement age.
Dr. Pramila Lall, 87, was born in Kerala, India, in 1932. She immigrated to Pakistan in 1957 after receiving MBBS from the Christian Medical College and marrying her Pakistani classmate, Dr. Ernest Lall, who advised her to become an eye specialist. Since then, she has dedicated her life to the cause and is said to have conducted over 500,000 surgeries, the highest number of such operations performed by any single doctor in Asia.
In 1987, Lall became member of the American Academy of Ophthalmologists, and the London Royal College of Ophthalmologists awarded her a fellowship in 1990.
Hailing from a family of academics, she recently narrated her journey from India to Pakistan while talking exclusively to Arab News at the Christian Hospital, Taxila, which was built in 1922 by missionaries.
“When I was young, I had a speech defect. I couldn’t speak out. If the teacher asked me anything, I would know the answer, but I closed my mouth, put my head down like I didn’t know it. It used to make me very ashamed of myself. My only hope was to be a veterinarian and take care of animals since I didn’t need to talk to them,” Lall said while she sat on her favorite black chair next to an old eye examination equipment.
“It was my mother,” she continued, “who told me: ‘You don’t take care of animals; you take care of human beings. You’ll become a doctor.’ My father said, ‘No, we don’t have money to send her to a medical college.’ But my mother said, ‘This daughter of mine is going to do medicine.’”
Lall enrolled in the medical school where she met her future husband, a Pakistani “Punjabi boy” who told her that there was “a lot of eye work required across the border” and advised her to do her residency in ophthalmology.
“I came to Pakistan on the 27th of September, 1957, at 4 o’clock in the evening. I was wearing a sari I didn’t have any socks on my feet and no shoes. I had only chappals, because in India that’s what we used all the time. We wore chappals and we wore saris.”
She had Pakistani visa stamped on her Indian passport and was accompanied by her husband. At the Amritsar border, she said, an “Indian immigration officer said, ‘Two doctors going off to Pakistan. We need doctors in India. You people better not go, you better stay in India.’”
Crossing over, the Pakistani immigration official said: “Welcome to Pakistan. We need doctors in this country.” It was a big welcome, she added, though she had to change her nationality within the first six months to permanently stay in the country.
Since then, Lall has returned to India once to receive the Paul Harrison Award in 1985 after previously being denied entry in 1965 when the two South Asian rivals suspended diplomatic relations while fighting a full-scale war.
“We needed to get an Indian visa to collect an award. The [Indian] embassy officer said, ‘You are a Pakistani. How come you are getting an award from India?’ I had to explain to him, that we came from India. We studied in Vellore, our work was there, training was there, and that was the reason why the Indians were giving me the award because I had done so much for the prevention of blindness in Pakistan. Only then he understood why I wanted to go to India,” Lall said, adding she did not have the urge to return to her country of origin. “Whatever I have are my staff and my friends in this country,” she said.
In 2002, President General (r) Pervez Musharraf gave her Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, an award of excellence conferred by the state, and she capitalized on the opportunity by requesting him to allow Christians to vote.
“When I got the award, I thanked the president and said I had one request: ‘I want you to do something for the rights of the minorities. We are not allowed to vote.’ He said, ‘I’ll do something about it,’” Lall said, smiling.
Discussing her career, she said there came a time when she was not able to take the pressure and influx of patients. She also faced hardships during the 1965 and 1971 wars since she was treated as a suspect due to her Indian origin.
“I just wrote a small message to my father and said, ‘Enough of Taxila. We are going to Canada. We are going to work over there. We’ll get good money over there and we won’t have all this business of being in Pakistan.’ My father wrote back and said, ‘Have you forgotten? Once you put your hand to the plow, you don’t turn back. Stick to your job and have faith in God. That’s the most important thing.’ The Lord had saved me. I am in my 80s now, and I keep praying, ‘Lord! Use me as long as you can, but I am ready to go to you whenever you call me,’” she told Arab News.
Lall continues her mission, though she now feels lonely since her husband passed away in March this year, her children live in the United States, and there is no one left in her family in India.
“I have stopped doing surgery now for four years. But I keep training others who come here so they can develop their skills and be good surgeons. I don’t want to be a burden. I have only one woman [maid] at home and one dog. I keep telling her, ‘If any day you find I am not breathing properly, this is the phone number. You call this ward and tell them, Please come and see Mrs. Lall.’”

Woman of vision: A life spent preventing blindness in Pakistan