Volunteer Week 2025: Spotlighting Orbis Legend Dr. Jeff Caspar

One such volunteer who’s transforming lives all around the world, is Dr. Jeff Caspar. Dr. Caspar currently serves as Director of Cataract and Refractive Surgery at the UC Davis Eye Center and is one of Sacramento’s leading eye surgeons.

When he's not saving sight in California, Dr. Caspar travels the globe sharing his expertise with local eye doctors with Orbis. Since his first sight-saving project in Ethiopia in 2012, Dr Caspar has visited many other countries, including Vietnam, China, and Zambia, sharing his skills and improving lives wherever he lands.

Dr. Caspar specializes in advanced small-incision cataract surgery using the latest technologies and has deservedly received several awards for excellence in clinical care.

Dr. Caspar performed some of the very first surgeries on the third-generation Flying Eye Hospital after its launch in 2016. The project took place in Shenyang, China, where he teamed up with Chinese eye doctors to bolster their skills in cataract extraction. Reflecting on the innovative approach to training, he said: “Being involved with Orbis is really amazing and the plane, despite being a large plane, has many different portions of it that provide this sort of training. “

“So while I’ll be operating with one of the trainee surgeons in the center of the plane in the operating room, in the front of the plane there’s a large classroom that seats around 30 people and they’ll be watching a 3D video through a number of glasses while someone there is narrating the surgery and also asking questions actively during the surgery that we can answer while we’re in the operating room. It’s really a pretty amazing sight!”

Gallery: Dr. Caspar training eye doctors in China

In 2024, Dr. Caspar flew to Lusaka, Zambia, to share his time and talent with eye doctors at our partner UTH Eye Hospital. In Zambia, there are only 38 ophthalmologists serving a population of 17 million people. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with the UTH team, he helped boost the skills and knowledge of a modern cataract technique called phacoemulsification, a delicate and specialized surgery with a goal to provide faster healing and improved patient outcomes.

During his second spell training in Lusaka, Dr. Caspar told us: “The program here has been an outstanding one, getting to work with students who are talented, energized, intelligent and really want the best care for their patients.”

“The importance of this program is to provide training in techniques that provide a safer more efficient surgery. The surgeons here have an excellent facility with a very modern phaco machine but haven’t had the training to perform to the highest standards with it. My training here is going to help them understand how to use this machine and provide them with the best results for their patients.”

Speaking about his training sessions in local hospitals Dr. Caspar shared, ‘it allows for the training of surgeons on their own or with their own equipment and with their own staff. This allows me to tailor their training to the strengths and limitations of their equipment, giving them a greater chance of sustaining these techniques after I am gone.’

Gallery: Cataracts training in Zambia

This National Volunteer Week, we’re celebrating the powerful contributions of Dr. Caspar and all of our global volunteers who are enhancing eye care and creating brighter futures in communities where it’s needed most. We couldn’t do what we do without them!