A flying hospital is fighting preventable blindness

This cargo plane has been transformed into a traveling eye hospital.

The Orbis Flying Eye Hospital is an international charity campaign on a mission to combat avoidable blindness. Run by volunteers, the airborne hospital provides teaching and support to eyecare professionals in places where funding and teaching facilities are lacking.

The plane, a cargo aircraft donated by FedEx, is equipped with an operating room, classroom, and recovery room, as well as an audiovisual system which streams live surgeries in 3D and enables simulation training in ophthalmology. The Flying Eye Hospital has so far provided training in over 95 countries, and offers live online lectures and surgery broadcasts on its telemedicine platform Cybersight.

Globally, around 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment, according to the World Health Organization. In about half of these cases, the impairment could have been prevented or has not been addressed.