On April 7, 2008, Orbis announced it would replace the DC-10 Flying Eye Hospital with a DC-10 Series 30 freighter. In addition to permanent country offices, Orbis also engages in long-term program work in countries in Latin America and the Caribbean as well is in countries including Nepal, Zambia, and Burkina Faso. Permanent Orbis offices in these countries, run by local staff, develop and implement an array of multi-year projects to improve the quality and accessibility of eye care to residents, particularly in rural area and impoverished urban communities. In 2010 Orbis established a country program office in South Africa. Country programs in Bangladesh, China, India and Vietnam soon followed. Orbis launched its first permanent country program in Ethiopia. Orbis selected the first initial five countries to work in year round based on need (magnitude of blindness), opportunity (local infrastructure and resources), and safety & stability to operate in-country. These programs were designed to respond to the needs of individual ophthalmic communities and local eye care providers. In 1998, Orbis embarked on a new path based on the strategy to strengthen the capacity of local partners in the developing world to prevent and treat blindness through full-time, ongoing in-country programs. That summer, the new Flying Eye Hospital took off on its inaugural mission to Beijing. After two years of conversion and renovation, it was placed in service in 1994, and the DC-8 was retired and donated to Chinese Aviation Museum near Beijing, China. The DC-10 contained twice the interior space of the original DC-8. Funded by private donations, Orbis purchased a DC-10 in 1992. In its first two years of operation, the Orbis DC-8 visited countries and held programs emphasizing the hands-on transfer of surgical skills.īy the late 1980s, as replacement parts for the aging DC-8 became more difficult and expensive to obtain, it became clear that a newer, larger aircraft was needed. The first Flying Eye Hospital was a Douglas DC-8-21 (N220RB) donated by United Airlines. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a number of private donors. Orbis was founded in 1982 with a grant from the U.S. History Orbis McDonnell Douglas DC-8-21 at Birmingham Airport, England Orbis is a founding partner, along with the World Health Organization, of VISION 2020: The Right to Sight, "a worldwide concerted effort designed to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020." In addition to the Flying Eye Hospital, Orbis operates hospital-based programs in several countries and works with local medical research and health-care organizations on blindness prevention and eye disease treatment. Orbis' intervention are tailored to local needs Orbis trains local doctors in low-tech, low-cost yet effective methods to correct diseases of the eyes. Cybersight, Orbis' telemedicine program, continues the training and mentoring relationships. Its Flying Eye Hospital not only gives care to patients, but also provides training to local staff and delivers equipment and surgical supplies to ensure that local teams are able to continue to help people long after the plane has left the program site. The organisation spends approximately a year planning and coordinating with partner hospitals and local organisations, making preliminary visits to observe the local medical teams. Orbis' programs emphasise skills, training and self-sufficiency. It is headquartered in New York, with offices in Toronto, London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Singapore, Cape Town and Addis Ababa. It was rated 4 stars on Charity Navigator in 2016 and was a Guidestar Gold Participant. Orbis is a registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible non-profit charity in the United States. Since 1982, Orbis capacity-building programs have enhanced the skills of 325,000 eye care personnel and provided medical and optical treatment to more than 23.3 million people in 92 countries. Its programs focus on the prevention of blindness and the treatment of blinding eye diseases in developing countries through hands-on training, public health education, advocacy and local partnerships. Orbis International is an international non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to saving sight worldwide.
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