http://www.pilotweb.aero Pilot April 2015 | 21
graduating to FedEx, but Project Orbis will
capture the most technically-correct heart.
On the ground the pilots are often used as
dogsbodies, lining up the patients, sorting
out lists, keeping the flow going. Bob
remembers his first job, in Tanzania, sitting
holding the hand of a ten-year-old girl,
blind from birth, while she waited with her
grandmother for something to happen that
she could hardly have understood. Later
that year, this kid was used as the poster
girl on the cover of Orbis’s annual
report — eyes open, big beaming smile.
You have to hope she’s had a good life.
But as much as they remember their
life-affirming successes, they also
remember the thousands they have had to
turn away, and the millions who need their
help. And that’s where you come in. If ever
money was well spent, it’s keeping that
plane flying, and kitting out the next one.
Not that I’m plugging anything, but if you
happened to have a bit of spare change,
you could pitch a few pennies into the
pot and help to support the best side
of aviation.
One last thing about the standing order.
I’ve supported a couple of charities, one of
them Project Orbis, by standing order for
many years. I selected them carefully,
researched their backgrounds and looked
at their accounts, and I know they spend
money wisely and well. Because I do this, I
feel free to decline to give money to
pop-up charity campaigns whose
backgrounds and
provenance are
unknown to me, and I
think that has a value
to me. There are a lot
of unscrupulous
people in the charity
business, and they can
stay on the right side
of the law by giving as
little as 5p in the pound to the charities
they purport to support. Having made my
own charity arrangements, I don’t need to
feel guilty walking past a tin-rattler or a
flag-seller in the street — even a legitimate
one. So as a privileged Westerner with a
hospital in your town, think about
spreading your good fortune around a little
by standing order. And if you can see to fly,
perhaps you could think about spreading a
little in the direction of http://www.orbis.org.ukunfortunately we’re making blind people
much faster than they can cure them.
Thank God for that DC-10. The plane may
be old, but it’s a technical marvel. It makes
its own pure oxygen; it produces its own
hospital-quality sterilised air, using either
the APU or the Jet-A burning ground carts
it carries in its belly, and it also makes
hospital-sterile water using its own filters
and UV system. It carries a microscope
that weighs a ton — a literal ton, not a
figure-of-speech ton — and woe betide the
pilot who does not
check that the
microscope is battened
down during his
preflight. They are
totally self-contained in
the field, and they rely
on no support from any
government. They have
some heavyweight
backers like Federal Express, but otherwise
they survive by cadging stuff and asking
people like you and me to send them
some money.
This is not a plug for FedEx either, but
they deserve one, so perhaps you could
treat it as if it was. Along with United
Airlines, FedEx gave Project Orbis the
DC-10 it currently runs, and more recently
it has given it an MD-10 which is being
fitted out to take over the job. FedEx
retired its last DC-10 in 2008 but has kept
the simulator going for seven years and
has helped fund the
training of volunteer
crews who fly the old
three-holer. Down the
years FedEx has
poured a lot of money
in cash and kind into
Project Orbis. That’s
Federal Express — you
know; ‘The World, On
Time’. Subliminal message there, for when
you next have an urgent parcel.
Bob Rutherford has been involved with
Project Orbis since the turn of the century,
first as a FedEx volunteer, now in
retirement as the chap who runs the DC-10
simulator: he’s also an FAA Examiner who
keeps the crews current. He’s one of these
no-nonsense pilots who is not given to
overt displays of emotion — he used to
bang F-3 Demons onto flight decks beforeT
his is not a plug. I just thought
that as you love flying, you
might appreciate knowing a little
about a fantastic project that
showcases aviation at its best,
and as a human being you might welcome
the opportunity to set up a small standing
order to help kick the work along, that’s all.
No pressure.
You’re an aviator, so you may well be
aware of Project Orbis — but if you’re not,
you’re in luck, because I’m going to tell you
about it now. These
are the people —
doctors, pilots and
support staff — who
take their flying
hospital to remote
parts of the world
and perform eye
surgery which we in
the West take for
granted, but which would otherwise be
impossibly out of reach for local people.
With relatively simple procedures, they
make the blind to see, and in three decades
they have been responsible for restoring
the sight of over 23 million people.
They go rushing about the world from
Bolivia to Vietnam to Mongolia to
Bangladesh to Honduras with their
fully-equipped eye hospital in the back of
an old DC-10. The most deserving cases
among the local population are led in for
surgery — they could do more, of course, if
they had more money — and the operations
are beamed to a viewing gallery at the
front of the aircraft, where local medical
staff are assembled, about forty at a time,
to be taught how to treat these cases
themselves. In just a few minutes, adults
and children who have in some cases been
blind for their whole lives, and who have
no hope other than Project Orbis, are on
the road to recovery. How cool is that!
Curable blindness is a scourge across
this planet. Some eighty per cent of all
blindness is avoidable or treatable, and the
scale of needless suffering is
heartbreaking. It’s not just sight loss — in
the Third World, sixty per cent of children
who go blind will die within a year.
Project Orbis is attacking a disaster of
overwhelming proportions. Since 1982 it
has trained 325,000 medical professionals
to carry out the necessary operations, but
A fantastic, flying charity
You’re an aviator,
so you maywell be aware of
Project Orbis...
...they remember
the thousands
they have had toturn away
Regulars | Pat Malone
PAT MALONE
Pat has worked as a journalist on three
continents and is a fixed-wing pilot and former
helicopter instructor with 1,500 hours TT