Orbis International commemorated its 40th year of “fighting avoidable blindness” on Tuesday, the day Orbis’ Flying Eye Hospital took its first flight in 1982, according to recent a statement from the non-profit organisation.
The statement quoted President & CEO of Orbis International Derek Hodkey as saying that the organisation’s founders had “a simple yet ambitious vision” when the idea of the Flying Eye Hospital was conceived, which was ending “avoidable blindness by providing training to eye care teams around the world”.
The statement added that the vision has remained the same, with change only coming with the organisation having “more ways to bring more people together than ever before.”
Three generations of the Flying Eye Hospital have internationally taken training to eye care teams in over 95 countries, as well as continuing to innovate and grow. Moreover, Orbis has conducted “tens of millions of eye screenings and carried out eye surgeries and laser treatments for hundreds of thousands of patients” in 40 years.
“Hundreds of thousands” of eye care professionals at all levels have also been trained by the organisation, with the statement noting that those trained also continue to provide “sight-saving care” for communities and training eye care professionals themselves in many cases.
Moreover, the statement underlined that the organisation launched long-term country programmes in 1998, which train eye care teams all over the world, build strong eye care systems and influence “national policies to prioritise eye care across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America”.
The efforts encouraged the establishment or improvement of “60 tertiary hospitals, 280 secondary eye hospitals, over 800 primary eye care centres and health facilities, nearly 160 vision centres and over 75 paediatric eye care centres”, the statement noted.
Orbis also created the award-winning telemedicine platform “Cybersight” to provide eye care professionals free virtual access to training and other resources in areas that need them most. The statement noted that the platform also enabled the organisation to adapt and continue serving communities amidst the pandemic, while the platform has over 56,000 registered users across more than 200 countries and regions. The organisation has also recently cooperated on the development of technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality tools.
The statement pointed out that innovative technology and approaches are a vital tool to meet the rapidly increasing scale of global eye care needs, emphasising the existence of solutions to end avoidable blindness, with the organisation remaining committed to “scaling them and getting them into the hands of the eye care teams that need them most”.
Orbis has an office in Macau headed by Isabel da Silva, its director of development. The fundraising and public awareness promotion office is located at 16 Rua de S. Domingos, Com Hin Lei Centre, 2/F. Tel: 28300787.
This undated handout photo provided by Orbis on Tuesday shows an Orbis team member in Ethiopia.
