HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh Attends Inaugural Orbis Visionaries Reception

The event celebrated vital advancements in eye health, from simulation and Virtual Reality training, to Artificial Intelligence to support the diagnosis of eye conditions, to Women Led Green Vision Centres, which tackle gender related barriers to seeking eye care.

Whilst there has been significant progress in tackling global vision loss through such advancements, the event also focused on the critical priorities ahead for ending avoidable blindness. This included ongoing work to eliminate trachoma by 2030, and training new generations of eye doctors and nurses in low-and-middle income countries.

With avoidable vision loss impacting livelihoods and educations as well as directly impacting quality of life, programmes and projects to reduce avoidable blindness will play a vital part in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Guests including Her Royal Highness, heard from speakers about various aspects of our work, including:

Hunter Cherwek, Vice President, Clinical Services & Technologies, Orbis International who spoke about our approach to training, including our Flying Eye Hospital programmes, and Cybersight.

Twenty years ago, Orbis launched the telemedicine service, which has grown to become the world’s largest free-to-access digital learning platform for ophthalmology. Over 80,000 registered users access Cybersight webinars and courses from anywhere in the world to enhance their skills and gain expert advice that will benefit patients.

Kate Gannon, Head of Programme Funding & Andrew Wardle, Senior Grants Manager, Orbis UK discussed our long term programmes, in collaboration with our amazing local partners. Together we deliver sight-saving programmes spanning 13 countries, including Ethiopia where we fight against blinding Trachoma, in accordance with the World Health Organisation's goal to eliminate the disease by 2030.

Women and girls account for 70% of all Trachoma cases and globally, 112 million more females than males live with vision loss. So, gender is a vital part of our programming. The event showcased Orbis’s work in Bangladesh, where our Women-led Green Vision Centres provide both livelihood opportunities for local women whilst also seeing a higher proportion of women and girls attending the clinics compared to centres run by men.

Annabelle Miles and Danielle Hutchings from FundamentalVR demonstrated our collaboration on the Orbis FVR simulator, which provides the most realistic surgical training simulation to date. It is the combination of a virtual reality headset to transport the user into a digital operating theatre, and the haptic-feedback instruments that mimic the texture, resistance and delicacy of operating on the eye create an experience like no-other, and prepare surgeons for the real thing.

Having previously travelled with Orbis to visit programmes in India in 2013 and Bangladesh in 2017, Her Royal Highness has witnessed first-hand the devastating impact of avoidable blindness on people’s lives. On these visits, The Duchess spoke with adults and children who had received life changing surgery, witnessing their initial reactions as their bandages were removed, in addition to speaking with our expert medical volunteers and local eye care teams, providing vital services to their communities.

During the Duchess’s visit to Dhaka, she was reacquainted with nurse Mammoth Adhikary, who she met in the Ispahani Islamia Eye Institute in 2009. Mammoth was involved in the very first Orbis Flying Eye Hospital programme in Bangladesh back in 1985 and is now Head Nurse at the hospital.