Airborne Hospital Makes House Call in L.A.

A unique aircraft--equipped with a state-of-the-art operating room and a 52-seat lecture hall--made a special landing at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday. But this was no emergency.

The airborne hospital arrived in Los Angeles as part of a goodwill campaign by Orbis International, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching doctors from developing nations how to help the estimated 30 million people who suffer from curable forms of blindness.

The DC-10 was donated last year by United Airlines and cost more than $7 million to renovate into a flying medical center. The plane replaced an older, smaller DC-8 that Orbis had used since 1982.

Hundreds of doctors from Europe and North America--including 50 from Los Angeles-area hospitals--have donated their time to Orbis to travel around the world helping patients and medical professionals. Many mechanics, pilots and aircraft workers from United Airlines have volunteered to repair and fly the plane.

“We try in about all the ways that are possible to help foster the success of the Orbis project,” said United’s chief executive officer, Gerald Greenwald. Recently, 200 United workers in San Francisco spent a weekend performing maintenance on the aircraft.

Orbis has flown 250 missions in 71 countries and trained 32,000 doctors and nurses since it began operating. These professionals have in turn treated 6 million people. The organization says it has restored or saved the sight of more than 18,000 patients on board its aircraft.

The plane has 15 video cameras that provide different angles so students can view surgeries. Doctors can talk to one another during surgery via closed-circuit television. All of the procedures are videotaped and given to the country Orbis is visiting.

An international crew of nurses and technicians flies with the plane for a year at a time. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life,” Dr. Sherwin Isenberg, a pediatric ophthalmologist at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center, said of his trips with Orbis to Sri Lanka and Ecuador. “But I’ve never felt so good at the end of the week.”

President Pina Taormina said Orbis’ financial situation has become tight since it acquired the aircraft. “We are barely meeting our financial obligations,” she said. The organization receives funding from United Airlines, the United States Agency for International Development and private sources.

“Our biggest problem is not finding the doctors, but keeping this plane flying,” she said.