A Mobile Operating Room for People in Need of Eye Surgeries
The second-grader, too poor to imagine flying to Thailand or Singapore for advanced medical care, is among a handful of patients selected to have surgery at Danang's airport aboard ORBIS International's flying eye hospital — a converted DC-10 with an operating room and rotating volunteer doctors from around the world.
"Before I only saw planes in the sky, but now that I'm on board a plane I'm really happy," Ni said through a translator. The young girl traveled six hours from her village with her father, who earns just $50 a month farming rice. "I don't feel like I'm in a hospital."
The front section of the plane has been converted into a classroom, with a medical library and a big screen that broadcasts close-up interactive surgeries from the operating room, located in the middle of the aircraft.
The two-week stop in Danang this month was the flying hospital's first time in communist Vietnam, arriving after a four-country tour in Africa. It has traveled to more than 70 developing countries for nearly a quarter century.
The New York-based charity has not only saved or dramatically improved the sight of thousands through surgery on the plane, but estimates it has trained about 124,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers to perform the procedures themselves.
Since the plane began flying in 1982, Foot estimates millions have had their sight restored through the skills passed along by ORBIS doctors. But that is a small dent in the overall level of preventable blindness and eye conditions plaguing the poor.
In 2002, the World Health Organization estimated about 124 million people had low vision and an additional 37 million were totally blind, mostly from cataracts and glaucoma. The Asia Pacific region, the world's most populated area, is home to 53 percent of all visually impaired people, followed by 17 percent in Africa, according to WHO figures.
Cataracts, which cause nearly half the world's blindness, are common in aging people, but some children are born with them. The procedure to remove the cloudy lenses is fairly simple, but requires special instruments and skilled doctors.
Trachoma, a chronic bacterial infection that causes the eyelids to turn inward and eventual blindness, is another problem easily treated with antibiotics or surgery if caught early.
Before the flying hospital touches down, ORBIS sends a team into the country to ask which procedures doctors want to observe, based on their experience and the equipment available at their hospitals.
In Ni's case, Dr. Doug Fredrick, a pediatric ophthalmologist from the University of California-San Francisco, removed her cataract alongside Dr. Nguyen Thi Thanh Chi, the only physician in Danang who performs eye surgery on children.
"Sau!" she shouted instantly when six fingers were held up 10 feet away.
"I see everything clear now," she said, smiling. "I could never see my father so clear."
Filed under Cataract Surgery, Eye Treatment, Refractive Eye Surgery
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