SIConversations: The Next Generation of Global Health Workers

(via Social Innovation Conversations)

check out this awesome and touching interview with Oliver Foot over at SIConversations.

The Next Generation of Global Health Workers

Oliver Foot, President and CEO, Orbis

According the World Health Organization, 37 million people worldwide are blind and an additional 127 million have vision so poor that normal life is impossible. A staggering 90 percent of the world’s blind live in developing countries and for 28 million of them, their blindness could have been prevented, or their eyesight restored, if only they had access to proper eye care.

In the mid-1970’s, a Houston-based ophthalmologist, Oliver Foot, decided to do something about it. And with the help of some of Corporate America’s most legendary titans–a past-its-prime DC-8, and a handful of volunteering medical professionals–he created Orbis International, a nonprofit on a mission to eliminate avoidable blindness and restore sight in the developing world.

The ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital is literally a hospital with wings that took flight after extensive modification to the passenger area and cargo bay of a DC-10 jet aircraft. This unique mobile teaching facility brings together dedicated eye care professionals and aviators to transport the gift of sight around the world.

On board, local doctors, nurses and technicians work alongside ORBIS’s international medical team in the operating, laser treatment, and recovery rooms to exchange knowledge and improve their ability to preserve and restore sight.

Since its launch in 1982, Orbis has provided training programs to more than 124,000 doctors, nurses, and other essential healthcare workers in 85 countries; performed more than 135,000 eye surgeries; and directly treated more than 3 million individuals. In addition, it’s been estimated that as many as 27.5 million children and adults have benefited from Orbis International’s medical training programs worldwide.