CABATUAN, Iloilo, Philippines — The world’s only flying ophthalmic surgical and training hospital has landed at the Iloilo airport and is currently conducting for three weeks eye surgical operations for under-privileged patients and training local eye care specialists in Western Visayas for free.

A converted DC-10 aircraft, the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital, which is the flying eye hospital of ORBIS International, a United States-based non-government organization aimed at eliminating avoidable blindness, chose Western Visayas as site beneficiary for its first program for 2012.

The three-week medical service is sponsored by worldwide logistics and courier service giant FedEx in partnership with the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC).

In the Philippines, there are approximately 600,000 people who are blind or suffering from a major eye disease and in Western Visayas, WVMC chief Dr. Jose Mari Fermin disclosed that three to five out of 50 people in Western Visayas are visually impaired.

Flying Eye Hospital medical director, Dr. Carlos Solarte, said the ORBIS’s two-week stay in Iloilo is expected to result in at least 100 surgeries correcting visual impairment including cataract, glaucoma, neuro-ophthalmology, and strabismus.

Dr. Josefina Salazar-Yap, president of Philippine Academy of Ophthalmology-Western Visayas Chapter, also said that local eye care specialists will be trained on board the hospital plane.

“It is not the volume of patients, but the quality of cases we will learn from,” she said.

On its third week, it will fly to the new Bacolod-Silay Airport in Negros Occidental for a medical program in partnership with the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH).