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 and partners work to improve eye care services through training and equipment capacity building. In Peru, the emphasis is on retinal disease, especially retinopathy of prematurity. In Haiti, ORBIS is working with local partners to develop and support an eye care stabilization project to provide services to displaced persons affected by the 2010 earthquake who were living in camps.

During 2011, through 6 projects taking place in Peru, Haiti and Jamaica:

• Nearly 1,900 doctors and other eye care staff received training
• Over 145,000 adults and children received eye examinations
• More than 35,000 adults and children received medical and optical treatments
• Over 3,200 eye surgeries/lasers 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

*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.