By Krittivas MukherjeeMUMBAI (Reuters) - The world's only flying eye hospital is on a two-week mission to India to perform free surgeries and train hundreds of eye care personnel in a country that has the world's largest blind population.
An estimated 75 percent of India's 12 million blind people suffer from avoidable blindness because of the country's limited eye care infrastructure that has only one eye surgeon per
100,000 people.
"But that can be achieved only if we train more and more eye care personnel which is the aim of our flying hospital," G.V. Rao, country director of the New York-based Orbis flying eye hospital, told Reuters.
"We train the trainers and we hope this ripple effect will benefit millions of blind people in India."
Orbis, an international nonprofit Organization focusing on preventing blindness in developing countries, operates the flying hospital on a converted McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jet that has been traveling for 25 years and has treated more than four million people in 80 countries.
The aircraft has operation theatres, patient waiting space, a consultation room, a technical support area and a training room.
Alongside performing dozens of free eye surgeries, Orbis doctors have been training hundreds of Indian doctors, nurses and eye care technicians to spread awareness about blindness in rural India, which accounts for about 80 percent of the country's blind population.
"We are here at the invitation of the Indian government, and we hope that we can make a difference to India's efforts to eradicate avoidable blindness," Drew Boshell, the flying hospital director, said.
"In India a child goes blind every four minutes and this is preventable."
Blindness prevalence in India is a little above 1.1 percent with cataracts being the main reason for loss of sight in most people.
Orbis doctors said their focus was pediatric ophthalmology as it was a highly specialized arena. More than 320,000 children in India suffer from avoidable blindness.
Orbis facts
The World Health Organisation estimates that 37 million people are blind worldwide and an additional 124 million have vision so poor that a normal lifestyle is impossible. Yet an estimated 75 percent of those suffering don't have to be blind. Millions could be cured right now because their blindness is caused by conditions that are easily treatable.
ORBIS provides medical communities in developing countries with the skills, knowledge and resources to prevent and treat certain diseases that cause blindness. Some of the more frequently occurring conditions include:
- Cataract
- Childhood blindness
- Corneal blindness
- Diabetic retinopathy
- Glaucoma
- Retinopathy of prematurity
- Strabismus
- Trachoma
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Sources : YahooNews | Reuters | Orbis | Where is the
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