Vietnam Virtual Flying Eye Hospital Project

This new project, funded by our sponsor FedEx, will train eye care professionals across Vietnam on ways to prevent the worsening of vision loss due to glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness and visual impairment. The number of glaucoma cases in Vietnam is increasing, especially among the younger population, as the country continues to face shortages of skilled eye care professionals and limited access to quality eye care, particularly in rural areas.

Glaucoma is the result of damage to the nerve connecting the eye to the brain caused by pressure from fluid buildup in the eye. The ten-week virtual Flying Eye Hospital project launched today will enable participating ophthalmology residents to focus on mastering each specific step in a procedure known as trabeculectomy – a surgery that creates a new pathway for that fluid inside the eye to be drained – and to discuss surgical case management for their patients.

Orbis began collaborating with Vietnam’s ophthalmic communities through hospital-based projects in 1996 and established a permanent office in Hanoi in 2003. Orbis has been providing the highest level of expertise to support the development of eye care services and blindness prevention in Vietnam, especially in the areas of retinopathy of prematurity, pediatric and cataract services, and glaucoma treatment.

In 2020 in Vietnam, Orbis and partners:

As part of our effort to expand learning materials into new languages, training will be carried out in Vietnamese through relevant pre-learning courses on Cybersight, interactive live lectures delivered weekly by our Volunteer Faculty, and simulation training.

After each live session, course participants will practice the surgical step they learned that week on artificial eyes before submitting a video of themselves performing the simulated technique for review and feedback from Volunteer Faculty.

Simulation training uses devices such as artificial eyes to allow complex surgical procedures to be broken down into smaller parts, giving eye care professionals the opportunity to practice each step as many times as they need to get it right, something that is not possible with an actual patient. This reduces the learning curve for difficult techniques, accelerates skill acquisition and improves outcomes for patients.

FedEx has supported Orbis for more than 30 years in the fight against avoidable blindness through more than US$22 million in donations and in-kind shipping. Last year, FedEx announced its renewed commitment to Orbis’s sight-saving mission with a US$3.5 million donation to help provide financial, logistics and operational support to the organization and its Flying Eye Hospital over the following five years. FedEx has played an indispensable role in helping Orbis achieve its mission by providing aircraft parts, maintenance, and pilot training.

In addition, FedEx donated the MD-10 aircraft that serves as the third-generation Flying Eye Hospital, and the aircraft is flown by FedEx pilots who volunteer their time to navigate the plane around the world on Orbis projects. The sponsorship of the virtual project launched today is part of the FedEx Cares 50 by 50 campaign to positively impact 50 million people around the world by the company’s 50th anniversary in 2023.

We want to give a big thank you to our sponsor FedEx, who has helped us deliver quality training projects like this for over thirty years. Because of their commitment, we can continue to innovate and use new technologies to fight blindness.