Orbis to highlight its Flying Eye Hospital at Hamburg event

The international charity provides communities across Africa, Asia and Latin America with access to high-quality eye care, fighting avoidable blindness and restoring vision for those who need it most. This is undertaken through the support of their Flying Eye Hospital, the world’s only accredited ophthalmic hospital onboard an M.D.-10 aircraft.

The aircraft, which features a classroom at the front of the plane, also has an operating theatre, pre and post-op spaces and a laser eye suite. Flying Eye Hospital programmes take place in partnership with local hospitals, transferring skills into the facilities so that eye-care teams can help more people struggling with avoidable vision loss within their communities.

The partnership with Passenger Experience Week will provide Orbis with a platform to fundraise and promote its inspiring work to the thousands of attendees and hundreds of exhibiting companies that are present at the show each year.

To learn more about Orbis and its work, attendees can visit their stand located in hall B2U03 in AIX. On the stand, Orbis staff will offer attendees a virtual tour of their M.D.-10 aircraft.

Rebecca Cronin, CEO of Orbis UK said: “We are immensely grateful to Passenger Experience Week for choosing Orbis to as its charity partner. The event presents an amazing opportunity to engage with attendees at the show and to share the story of how the aviation and medical world has come together to make a real difference to people’s lives.

“Thanks to the support of partners such as Passenger Experience Week, we can provide vital operations to children suffering with cataract, train local medical staff so that they can help more people within their community, and continue to work hard across the globe to ensure that no one experiences blindness unnecessarily.”

Commenting on the partnership, Exhibition Director of Aircraft Interiors Expo, Polly Magraw comments: “We have long been looking for the perfect charity partner for Aircraft Interiors Expo, and we are delighted that we have been able to partner with such an inspiring charity as Orbis.

“By giving a platform to Orbis at Passenger Experience Week, the full spectrum of companies across the aircraft interiors sector can learn how aviation is giving people around the world access to quality eye-care, no matter where they live.”

There are 253 million people in the world who are blind or visually impaired yet 75% suffer from conditions that are avoidable. What’s more 89% of people struggling with vision loss live within low and middle-income countries, where access to eye-care is limited.