In December 1984, the late Graham Layton and Zaka Rahmatulla’ who were retiring from their very successful business careers, decided to establish the Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust with Rs 1 million ($ 66,000). This was used to build and run a mobile eye-hospital in Tando Bago a small town 250 kilometres east of Karachi. They envisioned an organization which would grow to provide free eye treatment to the poor & underprivileged citizens across the length & breadth of Pakistan so that no Pakistani would go blind just because he/she could not afford the treatment. They also left behind 4 founding principles which we call 'The Spirit of LRBT' which guide our activities and permeates everything that we do:

• All treatment at LRBT should be totally free so that no man, woman or child becomes blind just because he/she cannot afford the treatment.
• Treatment should be appropriate, state-of-the-art. Charity should not mean second-rate treatment.
• There should be no discrimination due to gender, caste, ethnicity, language, religion or sect.
• Patients should be treated with compassion and dignity.

24 years later the vision of Graham Layton & Zaka Rahmatulla is a reality and their legacy is a nationwide network of 16 purpose-built hospitals, with state of the art equipment and 39 primary eye-care centres/outreach clinics in all the 4 provinces.

Although they are no longer with us, LRBT’s founders would have been proud to see that the work they started not only continues but reaches new heights.