Orbis UK have released their 2024 highlights video, revealing some of the incredible achievements their supporters helped make possible last year. 

 

 

The Orbis Flying Eye Hospital completed two sight-saving missions to Mongolia and Bangladesh. Orbis's clinical staff and Volunteer medical experts provided hands-on surgical, patient care and simulation training, as well as ophthalmic workshops, to local doctor and nursing teams. The projects focused on the ophthalmic sub-specialities of cataracts, glaucoma, and cornea, as well as anaesthesia, nursing, and biomedical engineering, to help improve adult and paediatric eyecare in both countries. 

In Bangladesh, Orbis’s Women-Led Green Vision Centres (WLGVC) screened nearly 26,000 people, over half of which were women and girls. Women make up 55% of the world’s visually impaired population and shockingly, two-thirds of children who are blind are girls. By being women-led, the centres not only address a variety of barriers for women and girls, but improve access to eye care for everyone living within the local community.

Last year, Orbis also marked 25 years of saving sight in India, celebrating a new dedicated children’s eyecare unit in Odisha. In Ethiopia, the organisation helped to administer 1.3 million doses of sight-saving antibiotics in the fight against the infectious eye disease, trachoma. Thanks to the ongoing help of their supporters and partners, Orbis is making progress on eliminating trachoma from Ethiopia by 2030, but there is still more to be done to ensure no one suffers from this terrible disease.

Cybersight, Orbis’s free award-winning telemedicine platform, reached 100,000 users, helping more trained practitioners to prevent avoidable sight loss in the countries where they work. The organisation also hosted their annual Visionaries reception. Her Royal Highness The Duchess OF Edinburgh, joined them in her role as Global Ambassador for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), advocating to end avoidable blindness worldwide.

To find out more about Orbis’s work, please visit their website.