Flying Eye Hospital visits Zambia

International eyecare charity Orbis has launched a surgical training programme in Zambia on board the Flying Eye Hospital – a fully accredited ophthalmic teaching hospital on a plane. 

Clinical staff including five doctors and nurses from the UK will provide hands-on simulation and surgical training to eyecare professionals from across the country. For the first time, Zambian ophthalmologists trained through Orbis-sponsored fellowships will work alongside Flying Eye Hospital staff and volunteers to deliver simulation training. 

Avoidable blindness affects at least 4% of people in Zambia, where there is only one ophthalmologist for every 556,000 people. This is the first project of its kind in the capital city, Lusaka. Surgeons and nurses will train on the aircraft at Kenneth Kaunda airport, and at Orbis’s partner University Teaching Hospitals-Eye Hospital.  

It is the second Flying Eye Hospital training project in Zambia, following a paediatric ophthalmology visit to Ndola in 2012.  

The trip provides three weeks of combined simulation and hands-on surgical training, along with tailored virtual courses using Orbis’s telemedicine platform, Cybersight. The project includes interdisciplinary subspecialty training, including on cataract, the leading cause of blindness in Zambia.  

“This partnership between Orbis and University Teaching Hospitals-Eye Hospital marks a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to address avoidable blindness and vision loss in Zambia,” said Lucia Nadaf, country director of Orbis Zambia.