Heroes of Orbis: Dr. Roberto Pineda

Dr. Pineda has been volunteering with Orbis since 1998, traveling the world sharing his unique skills and experience with eye teams in low-resource communities. He has volunteered on more than 15 sight-saving projects, including our 2024 Flying Eye Hospital project in Chattogram, Bangladesh.

Dr. Pineda is a distinguished ophthalmologist with subspecialty training in corneal disorders, external disease, refractive surgery, and ocular trauma. His specialty areas also include laser vision correction, corneal surgery, and cataract surgery.

He gained his MD from the University of Minnesota, completed his residency and Fellowship at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a Harvard teaching hospital in Boston.

He is the Director of the International Council of Ophthalmology fellowship at Mass. Eye and Ear; the advisor for the Harvard College Chapter of Unite for Sight; and a Board Member of Visionaries International, a nonprofit that trains corneal surgeons around the world.

In 2014, Dr. Pineda was named Associate Director of the office of Global Surgery and Health at Mass. Eye and Ear. Dr. Pineda is working to introduce the artificial cornea, known as the Boston keratoprosthesis, in Ethiopia and Sudan, and is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards.

During his 15th Flying Eye Hospital program in Accra, Ghana, in 2019, we caught up with Dr. Pineda to find out more about his experience training local doctors, its challenges as well as the benefits of medical education provided by Orbis.

“The mission this week for me was cataract surgery, phacoemulsification specifically. We’re going to be working with two trainees here and I'm very excited to be here. I think one of the challenges we have when we're teaching surgery is to talk about complications. And I think one of the best things we can do for our audience is to share our own complications and talk about how we've managed them, what the thought process is, and to get them to be in line with how we managed these problems. So that when they run into similar problems, they can already have kind of an outline of how they think about these difficulties.

His honest and refreshing approach always goes down well with local doctors, so much so that some have even visited him at his practice in Boston.

Dr. Pineda is a huge believer in knowledge sharing and skills exchange when it comes to eye care.

“Most of us consider vision our most important sense. We obviously need all our senses, but vision has always been what people refer to as the windows to our soul. And most cultures highly value their vision. Orbis's mission to eliminate preventable global blindness is a necessary mission, a necessary vision. And, I think that we all can participate in this program and process to help everyone in the world make the most of what they have with their vision."

We'd like to say a huge thank you to Dr. Pineda for giving up his free time and energy to share his world-leading skills and expertise to enhance the quality of eye care globally. We're incredibly fortunate to have you as part of the Orbis community.