City doctor selected for the Orbis flying eye hospital team
Indian Express: A Pune doctor is once again in the Orbis flying eye hospital team that circles the globe to save the eyesight of children in developing countries. Eight to ten Indians are invited every year as part of the multinational medical expert team and this year, too, Pune-based ophthalmologist with H V Desai Eye hospital Dr Parikshit Gogate has been selected.The team will operate upon 150 children with eye defects in Syria.
Dr V P Andurkar, director of medical administration at H V Desai Eye hospital, said Gogate had been selected last year to operate upon children in Uganda, Tanzania and Africa.
Gogate, who heads the department of paediatric ophthalmology at H V Desai Eye hospital, has been selected this year as an expert to conduct surgeries aboard the DC 10 jet.
According to Dr G V Rao, head of the Orbis International in India, around 400 programmes have been conducted across 80 countries.
Orbis International is an NGO dedicated to saving eyesights worldwide.
Orbis programmes focus on prevention of blindness and treatment of blinding eye diseases in developing countries.
Best known for its flying eye hospital project, ORBIS volunteer pilots fly the plane and its international medical team to developing countries around the world to teach urgently needed sight-saving skills.
Local patients receive free treatment during training, says Rao.
According to the World Health Organisation, 37 million people worldwide are blind — yet 28 million suffer needlessly. Their blindness could have been prevented or treated. Eye diseases have long been recognised as one of the major health problems in countries in the Middle East. According to a release by the Orbis International, as many as 1,30,200 Syrians are blind and more than 8,37,000 have low vision with the majority of the causes being either treatable or preventable.
Cataract accounts for half of the blindness (45 per cent) cases despite the fact that the condition is curable.
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