This little girl from northern Peru received treatment from the Instituto Regional de Oftalmologia -- an ORBIS partner in Trujillo.

ORBIS doesn't have an office in Latin America or the Caribbean but does engage in long-term projects. In Jamaica, ORBIS focuses on cataract care and orbital trauma. In Peru, the emphasis is on retinal disease, especially retinopathy of prematurity. ORBIS has also conducted projects in Costa Rica and Guyana.

ORBIS sponsored the Caribbean’s first regional biomedical engineering training workshop in Jamaica in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization, the Ministry of Health of Jamaica and the American College of Clinical Engineering.

Given the high cost of medical equipment and the fact that the majority of malfunctioning equipment can be maintained or rehabilitated for a fraction of the cost of replacement, ORBIS and its partners used this workshop as a forum for developing new strategies to ensure that medical equipment can be repaired using local expertise.

2008 achievements

During 2008, through five projects taking place in Peru and Jamaica:

• Nearly 1,400 doctors and other eye care staff received training
• Over 44,500 people received eye examinations
• More than 37,000 children and adults received non-surgical ophthalmic and medical treatment
• Over 2,000 eye surgeries were performed

ORBIS "firsts" in Latin America and the Caribbean

ORBIS has achieved numerous “firsts” in blindness prevention and treatment in Latin America and the Caribbean:

• This little girl was successfully treated for retinopathy of prema- turity and no longer faces a world of blindness.

  In 1982, the president of Peru created the country’s first eye bank after watching a corneal transplant onboard the Flying Eye Hospital.
  
  
• ORBIS introduced Cyber-Sight, ORBIS’s telemedicine initiative, to provide worldwide, Internet-based ophthalmic patient consultation for free to any qualified partner in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  
  
• Jamaican and Peruvian doctors received training on virtual reality surgery simulators for the first time during ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital programs.

Through ORBIS, ophthalmologists in Latin America and the Caribbean can now receive continuing medical education credit through the American Academy of Ophthalmology for online work completed by Cyber-Sight partners and for virtual reality surgeries

ORBIS partners in Latin America and the Caribbean include:

Bustamante Hospital for Children ( Jamaica) • Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social ( Costa Rica) • Fundación para Desarrollo del HNN ( Costa Rica) • Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation ( Guyana) • Hospital Nacional de Niños ( Costa Rica) • Regional Ophthalmologic Institute of Trujillo ( Peru)

*Blindness is defined as visual acuity of less than 3/60 or a corresponding visual field loss to less than 10 degrees in the better eye with best possible correction.
** Low vision is defined as visual acuity of less than 6/18 but equal to or better than 3/60, or a corresponding visual field loss to less than 20 degrees in the better eye with best possible correction.