Royal joins Orbis at Visionaries event
The Duchess of Edinburgh with Orbis UK Nominations Committee chair, Sir Dominic Asquith
Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh, attended the third annual Orbis Visionaries reception this week (20 May) at the historic Battersea Power Station, in London.
In her role as the Global Ambassador for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), Her Royal Highness has witnessed Orbis’s impactful work in Ethiopia, Bangladesh and India, over many years. The event was held inside the historic Control Room A and was attended by other high-profile guests including Susannah Constantine and Tom Davies.
The Orbis Visionaries reception showcased innovative approaches to providing eyecare and the charity’s plans for the next five years.
Since 1982, Orbis has been working across the globe to train eyecare teams, and expand eye health services, so those living with sight loss can be found and treated. Orbis also operates the world’s only fully accredited ophthalmic teaching hospital on board a plane, the Flying Eye Hospital.
The event featured a panel discussion led by TV presenter and journalist Helen Fospero, where Orbis experts discussed tackling avoidable vision loss and addressed key issues such as access to eye care for women and children, and improving vision to support work.
Speaking on the panel, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh said: “I have been lucky enough to travel with Orbis through my work with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness as Global Ambassador, and I have seen for myself so many times the very effective operations that are carried out in varying situations. The wonderful thing about eye solutions is that it’s so simple. We have the technology. We have the know-how. We just don’t have the spread of capability.
“I had a wonderful trip to Ethiopia, which is the country with the largest number of people with blinding trachoma in the world, and although they face a massive uphill struggle, we’ve already seen huge improvements in interventions.”