IT IS only a small patch of land on the dusty road leading from Mansehra to Balakot. But by this time next year it will be a beacon of hope in the shattered landscape of northern Pakistan.
When a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the region a year ago today, health care services were destroyed along with homes, power and communications in a tragedy which killed nearly 80,000 people.
Although the government hospital at Mansehra survived - a nearby school collapsed killing more than 200 children - it has only been able to offer a fraction of the services it performed before the huge tremor.
Eye care services had almost to be abandoned which, in a country where cataracts are the biggest cause of childhood blindness, was another devastating blow to an already vulnerable population.
Now a new £450,000 specialist eye hospital is to rise on the Balakot road which will allow surgeons to carry out up to 25,000 of the 15-minute operations every year. It is small sign that while major problems remain in Pakistani Kashmir, basic health care taken for granted in the West is returning to normal.
The hospital will be run by the Layton Rahmatulla Benevolent Trust (LRBT), started by a British engineer, which is trying to raise the full cost of setting up the hospital. Sightsavers International, a British charity, is marking World Sight Day on Thursday by appealing for the final £80,000 to bring the project to fruition.
Compared to the difficulties of finding homes for the thousands of people still homeless before the winter snows set in, eye treatment may not seem a major priority. But Dr Haroon Atwan, Sightsavers' Pakistan representative, said: "Such a catastrophe makes people with impairments even more vulnerable then they were before. Losing their sight on top of everything else that has happened makes recovery much more of a problem.
"Because of the earthquake there is now an enormous backlog of operations to carry out. If we can raise the money quickly then LRBT hope to open by the end of 2007."
The town of Balakot was completely levelled by the earthquake but, by a quirk of geography, Mansehra was not as badly affected. A Sightsavers fact-finding team, which visited the area last week, found that most of the collapsed buildings had been cleared, power and water had been restored and children were returning to school.
But the scale of the disaster across a precipitously mountainous region means recovery is painfully slow. Although Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf angrily denied claims by Oxfam last week that 1.8m people faced their second winter under canvas, hundreds of thousands are still living rough in makeshift shelters on top of piles of rubble.
According to Pakistani official figures, 600,000 homes need to be built in the remote countryside and 30,000 in urban areas but Musharraf is insistent he needs a further $800m of international aid if he is to solve the problem by the end of 2008.
After one year, there appears to be little change to Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where about 36,000 died.
Relief tents stand on top of the skeletal remains of buildings. Dust and exposed iron rods are a permanent feature, and some buildings still lie where they fell.
However, there are some signs of significant progress. A corrugated-iron university, paid for by a charity, will be operational before Christmas and in Muzaffarabad and other towns destroyed by the earthquake, Pakistanis are trying to pick up where they left off. Roadside markets are booming again.
Government officials are claiming that expectations are too high. "We need time," said Ahmed Nadeem, deputy chairman of the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority. "The biggest problem has been managing expectations. Everybody thinks this work should have been done yesterday."
Health care remains patchy. Many of the 2,000 children who lost legs, arms or toes in the earthquake or its aftermath are still waiting for prosthetics, and funding is scarce.
Doctors say one of the most pressing problems is dealing with the psychological fall-out of witnessing such tragedy, especially among children.
Donations to assist Sightsavers International in its work to combat preventable blindness around the world can be made using the 24-hour donation line (0800 089 2020) or via
www.sightsavers.org.
