Qatar Airways renews its partnership with Orbis UK

QatarAirways has announced that it has renewed its sponsorship as officialairline partner of Orbis UK for a further three years. Orbis is aglobal charity that brings people together to fight avoidable blindnessthrough access to quality eye care. Together with its partners, Orbistrains eye teams, strengthens eye care services and works on the groundto provide lasting solutions to communities in need.In a pressstatement yesterday, the airline said it has been a “proud supporter” ofOrbis and its blindness prevention programmes since 2012. Orbis’sFlying Eye Hospital spearheads the charity’s global efforts to transformlives. The world’s only accredited eye hospital with wings is equippedwith a “state-of-the-art” operating theatre, which is connected to aclassroom at the front of the room with a 3D screen, enabling thoselearning to get a real view of the surgery taking place. The aircraftalso features pre- and post-op spaces for patients to recover.QatarAirways Group chief executive Akbar al-Baker said: “Qatar Airwaysstrongly believes in giving back to the global community and making adifference. As an airline that connects communities and people aroundthe world, we are delighted to continue our support for Orbis foranother three years as official airline partner. This initiative is ofgreat importance to the global communities served by thisstate-of-the-art flying medical facility, providing crucial eye care topeople around the globe.”Orbis UK trustee Dr Robert Walters said,“We are so thankful for Qatar Airways’ trust, friendship and supportsince 2012. Together, we have already hosted the Flying Eye Hospital inDoha three times and facilitated royal visits, enabling us to gather thesupport required to launch ‘Qatar Creating Vision’. It is only throughthe power of partnerships that we are able to proudly celebrate themillions of eye tests provided to children and the thousands of peopletrained to help find those struggling with low vision in communities.”Therenewed sponsorship this week also coincided with a visit by Sophie,Countess of Wessex, to a ‘Qatar Creating Vision’ programme in Dhaka andChittagong, Bangladesh. There, she watched as patients’ bandages wereremoved, spoke with the Orbis volunteers transforming lives and thelocal medical teams undertaking brilliant work.The royal visitconcluded in Doha, where the Countess also met with al-Baker tocelebrate the achievements of ‘Qatar Creating Vision’, which hasundertaken 2.4mn eye tests for children and provided over 27,000training sessions to doctors, teachers and community workers, to reachthose living with unnecessary blindness, the statement noted.In2013, the Countess - in her role as ambassador for the InternationalAgency for the Prevention of Blindness - visited Doha with the OrbisFlying Eye Hospital to discuss the devastating impact a lack of accessto eye care can have on people across the world. In October 2015, theQatar Fund for Development and Orbis launched ‘Qatar Creating Vision’,an initiative that brings together the people of Qatar in the fightagainst preventable blindness. Earlier this year, the aircraftreturned to Doha to bring together key stakeholders from across theophthalmic medical community in Qatar to share knowledge of preferredpractices and approaches to eye care. Qatar Charity (QC) said it hascompleted more than 50% of a campaign to combat blindness inBangladesh, a campaign organised in co-operation with the British Orbisinstitution.QC said in a statement that the campaign has so farcovered the regions of Dhaka, Jalampur, Nagon and Barisal, resulted inthe training of 79 doctors, 481 eye health workers, initial testing ofabout 1mn adults, initial screening of more than 200,000 children andtreatment for more than 716,000 adults and 147,000 children.A teamof ophthalmologists has also been trained to perform cataracts andprovide high quality medical devices to enable large numbers ofsurgeries to be performed, that is besides upgrading the managementcapabilities of specialised hospitals and to develop quality standardsin 3 hospitals.In March 2015, Qatar Charity and Orbis signed aMemorandum of Understanding (MoU) to pave the way for efforts to combatblindness and restore sight, focusing initially on Bangladesh with 7.4mnblind and visually impaired people.Under the agreement, QatarCharity will raise funds to fund blindness campaigns of more than QR4mn,while Orbis will carry out the project as a result of its long andcontinuous experience of more than 15 years in the face of blindness inBangladesh.The campaign aims to check up more than 2mn patients andrestore sight to thousands by performing 50,000 eye surgeries intargeted cities and areas in Bangladesh, where 7.4mn people are blindand visually impaired.Mohamed al-Ghamdi, Executive Director ofInternational Development, Qatar Charity (QC), expressed QC’s desire toexpand its partnership with Orbis, which has its longstanding experiencein combating blindness.He added that Qatar Charity is ready toharness all available resources in its field offices around the worldand put all its expertise and experience accumulated at theinternational level in the service of the objectives of jointcooperation between the two parties.the eye patients of Rohingyarefugees in Bangladesh, especially children.