This Eye Hospital On A Plane Takes Flight To Keep Sight Alive

Blindness is a huge--but usually totally treatable--problem in the developing world, but many local health services don’t have the resources to combat it. The solution? Just fly in a high-tech eye hospital.
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The Flying Eye Hospital is the world’s only plane-meets-eye hospital, converted from a DC-10 aircraft. Quite literally a hospital with wings, the plane has visited more than 77 countries and conducted 279 training and service programs in 154 cities since 1982.

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Orbis

Orbis 30 year Anniversary

As many of you I am a fervent supporter of Orbis. This video nicely shows the impact Orbis has had on the world over  the past 30 years!
Uvealblues

ORBIS International receives donation of USD5m and MD-10-30 aircraft from FedEx

A great reason to support Fedex!!!! They have been instrumental in the success of Orbis since inception!
Uvealblues

ORBIS International, a non-profit organisation dedicated to saving sight around the world, on Wednesday announced it has received a new USD5.375m commitment in the form of cash and in-kind gifts from Fedex Corp (NYSE:FDX),a logistics company.
FedEx is also donating an MD-10-30 cargo aircraft to ORBIS to be the third-generation Flying Eye Hospital. The new Flying Eye Hospital will be built on an MD-10-30 freighter aircraft and will use a modular design concept. It is said to be the first time such modular units have been designed for an aircraft and they must meet both aviation and medical certification standards.

A Flying Eye Hospital Raises Security Eyebrows

A great interview of my good friend Hunter Cherwek, Medical Director of Orbis, on the travails of international travel.
Uvealblues


I NEVER thought that I’d be traveling as much as I do. But I’m flying almost constantly. It’s an exhausting, yet rewarding lifestyle.

When I fly back to the United States, I tell my family to give me an extra hour to get through customs and security.

Because of all the stamps on my passports, especially from places like Vietnam, Syria and Myanmar, which are some of my favorite countries, it sometimes takes a while to explain to border agents that I’m a doctor returning from an Orbis program.

How I get from one country to another always raises questions since I could fly into a country on a commercial flight, but fly out privately on the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital. That raises eyebrows with immigration officers in all countries.

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Continuing to Save Sight in 2010

Here is a nice post from Rebecca Saxton, one of the newest and most enthusiastic members of the Orbis team, describing what Orbis is doing in Niger (in the middle of a presidential coup nonetheless!)
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“This is the only chance he has for this surgery. If he doesn’t come in on Monday, he will go blind soon,” said Amelia, citing the fact that with only 13 ophthalmologists in the whole country, and very limited resources, eye care in rural areas of Niger is almost non-existent.

I immediately left the room to find translators. I sat with him for a while, walking several different translators over to him to explain the importance of his appointment on Monday, and making sure he had a way of getting to the hospital in Niamey. I was afraid that with the information switching from English to French to Zarma, the unfamiliar faces, and the general apprehension that people have around doctors that the message would not get across. When he walked out, I was afraid we would never see him again.

Sitting from my back office aboard the Flying Eye Hospital, I can see into the room where Moussa is currently getting prepped for surgery. As in all of our cases, he will be operated on by one of our volunteer doctors, along with 2 local doctors from Niger. This way, when we fly out, the local doctors will have better capability to deal with cases like Moussa’s.

IRISH TEACHER HELPS RAISE 3,000 EUROS FOR EYE-CARE PROJECTS IN ETHIOPIA

Dublin, Ireland (December 12, 2009) – Niall Sherlock (25), a teacher and runner from Dublin 15 became the first European to finish the Great Ethiopian Run all the while helping raise 3,000 euros for Orbis Ireland’s eye-care projects in the country.

With close to 40,000 participants, the race was the largest ever race on the African continent.

The Castleknock local completed the 10k race in aid of charity, Orbis Ireland, in a respectable time of 34 minutes and 50 seconds given the challenging conditions.

Orbis program on World Sight Day

Medical Director, Hunter Cherwek, in an Orbis from Chittagong..

Award for Humanitarian Leadership

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) today announced that the Civil Air Patrol will be presented with the NBAA Al Ueltschi Humanitarian Award in recognition of the organization’s efforts to provide disaster relief for people and communities in times of crisis.
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Al Ueltschi, the award’s namesake, has been widely recognized for his lifetime of dedication to philanthropic causes. He was instrumental in the development of ORBIS, an international non-profit organization dedicated to preventing blindness and saving sight. Ueltschi, who has served as ORBIS’s chairman for more than 20 years, has made a number of significant financial contributions to the organization and has been instrumental in developing many of its most important initiatives.

World's only flying eye hospital

In this BBC news piece there is  a nice video of the inside of the Flying Eye Hospital , narrated by my friend, Hunter Cherwek, who is the medical director  of the  Flying Eye Hospital.
Uvealblues 
On approaching the flying eye hospital, it looks like any of the other passenger jets on the runway waiting to take holidaymakers to exotic destinations.

But this DC-10 jet is exceptional - it houses the only airborne operating theatre for eye treatment in the world.

Its mission is to tackle avoidable sight loss and its charter reaches developing countries where 90% of the world's 45 million blind people live.

ORBIS 2009 Nairobi Program

Professional photographer, Kelvin Young, has nicely captured the spirit of the Orbis trip to Kenya in June here. It is worth checking out the original version on youtube as you can watch it in high-def.

Vision of eye care charity

Trachoma causes blindness but can be treated, and one charity brings such cures to poor areas, writes MICHAEL McHALE .

THE EYELIDS turn inwards. They make contact with the eyeball, scratching the cornea and leading to excruciating pain and scarring. Usually there is only one outcome: blindness.

These are the effects of trachoma, an infectious disease that, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO), affects about 84 million people worldwide. Eight million become visually impaired as a result, causing 3 per cent of the world’s blindness. Yet it is preventable.

The disease is most prevalent in developing countries that have difficulties with water supply, overcrowding and large numbers of flies, thereby triggering infection.

It is spread from person to person, often from child to child or from child to mother. A disease of poverty, it was only eradicated in Ireland in the 1930s.

Orbis Ireland is a charity that hopes to halt the spread of trachoma in two of the largest regions in Ethiopia – Gamo and Gofa – which combined have a population of two million. Of this population, 40 per cent are infected with the disease while 70,000 have already been made blind by it.

Orbis in Kenya

Sorry I haven't had much time to blog of late here in Kenya. I have been involved in yet another fantastic Orbis trip in Nairobi.
There is an outstanding photographer from Toronto on this trip who has some nice photos and commentary on this trip on his blog--Kelvin Young photography

Paul Hawken's Commencement Address in Portland

As I am headed out to Kenya to do work with Orbis, I found this piece--which reminds me of the change Orbis brings to our world...

What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done.
Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement.

ORBIS US' photostream

Here are some flickr photos of orbis in action from professional photogapher, Raul Vasquez

World Sight Day

World Sight Day was last week..My friend, Orbis Medical Director, Hunter Cherweth, speaks about vision related issues and Orbis here...

We Need Your Vote

In Reno, we already have a tremendous amount of support for the Orbis Pediatric Eye Care Centers in India--if you are an American Express card holder please go to the link and add to our local support for these centers....
From the Orbis Blog...

Nyan and Lehka Pendyala's "Kids for Sight" project to raise money for a pediatric eye care center in India made it to the Top 25 in the American Express Members Project. Now we need your vote so that the project ends up in the Top 5. Those in the Top 5 win anywhere from $100,000 to $1.5 million!

We only need your vote, not your donation. The cash prize comes from American Express.

Voting right now is limited to those with an American Express card. However, anybody can publicize the competition and get out the vote. Please send an e-mail or a widget, which you can find at the bottom of the kids' page, to everyone you know and urge them to vote for Kids for Sight. Please post on your Facebook and Myspace pages, and any other social networking sites you belong to.

Here's the link: http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/8CEPG6

As Soon as I Landed...

Latest entry from the Orbis blog, written by Dr. Habeeb Ahmad,a third year resident from SUNY Downstate Health Center-- that captures the diversity and spirit of the Orbis team...


As soon as I landed in Beijing, I recalled the awe that I had felt for China during the weeks earlier when watching the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When I arrived in Harbin, China my eyes were opened to why I was there. Here, I am in a remote corner of the world in China, here to help an indigent population in need of eye care. My first encounter with the individual members of ORBIS was quite interesting. Here I thought, were people of all different backgrounds, cultures, religions and language with a common passion for saving sight worldwide. On Monday, I witnessed firsthand this passion during the screening for oculoplastics, glaucoma and medical retina clinics at the number two affiliated Hospital at Harbin Medical University.

Orbis Blog

Orbis has its own blog--which is a good reference to keep up with the latest "going ons" of the Flying Eye Hospital.

Farewell from Uganda

The Flying Eye Hospital program in Kampala, Uganda has ended and the ORBIS DC-10 is currently en route to its next destination of Harbin, China. ORBIS volunteer faculty and blogger (http://uvealblues.blogspot.com/) Dr Hardeep Dhindsa sent blog.orbis.org a small collection of photos from the Uganda program containing an assortment of images of fellow volunteer faculty and patients. The album can be found here.

Dancing with Balance