In today’s executive column, The Ethiopian Herald had come up with an exclusive interview of an international CEO who has over 34 years of experience as strategist, leader and manager in a career that spans across military, manufacturing and small business sector. He had served as Senior Vice President of Government Programs & Sales at Gulfstream Aerospace, Vice President of Business Development at Integrated System Solutions (ISS) and Military Chief Executive in the United States Air force. He is also qualified pilot to fly the KC-10 and DC-10. Currently, he is the CEO and President of Orbis International, an NGO working in eye care owning to transforming peoples’ lives and ending blindness in the world through philanthropic activities. Excerpts!
Orbis International Chief Executive Officer and President – JOHN BOB RANCK: “Orbis International transforms peoples’ lives at the family, community and national level through the fight against avoidable blindness. In 2018, Orbis did over 65 projects in 27 countries. We administer over 35 million dollar projects per annum; we did over 65,000 training sessions for physicians and other professionals in the world. And it is a way for us to mentor and teach through remote training surgical mentoring where an experienced surgeon can look into the microscope with someone that they’ve been working with.
So, a surgeon in the UK can be helping with the surgery in Ethiopia through online coaching cybersight so that if something abnormal happens or unexpected happens, the experienced surgeon can help make sure that everything goes well. So far, through our cybersight program, Orbis has reached eyecare professionals in 165 countries last year and some of those are the hardest places to reach in the world like; Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria where doctors want to do well and want to learn but have troubles getting to help people that they need.”
“Orbis is teaching surgeons, anesthesiologist, nurses and biomedical technicians. It is helping hospitals to become more efficient. It is also helping guide policy to make sure that eyecare is considered as part of basic health care. And it believes that when it changes one person’s life in one community, a dollar invested in a community brings back USD 4 in productivity for the community.”
“We have done research that shows that provision of glasses to workers, people who do in the textile work and sewing or tea picking can increase productivity between 20 and 30 percent, which is a very real economic gain for the individual and for the family and for the community. So, we teach, we help them grow, we help them fix the problems in their community.”
And that helps economic development. The way we teach is important because it keeps children in school. We get them eye screening and we get them glasses early too often. Children are pulled from school because they are not performing well. They may not be performing well and the teacher thinks they are lazy children when the reality is they cannot see. About 80% of what a child learns is visual. So, if we can keep a child in school, we can help that child grow into a productive adult. If we can keep girls in school, then we can help more girls become more productive membersof society.
If we can help mothers at their home, we can help families. And, I have that if you really want to fix a significant eye care problems like Trachoma, help the mother in the household. She is the healthcare manager for the children. She is the primary person taking care of the infected child.
Let me emphasize that the beauty of our work is that the solutions are known. We are not researching, hoping to find a cure. The cures are here, the treatments are here. We want to get the funding to teach people to do the things to prevent and cure blindness. So it is not a hope, it is a real task. And so that is what makes us different than many organizations in the short term.
And Ethiopia, we would like to expand our work farther into Southern Nations, farther down towards the border and reach more communities. Because the more communities we reach beyond where we are now, the less chance that the infection will come back and the less chance that people will migrate with the infection. And so expanding our work is important.
As Ethiopia develops politically under the current Prime Minister, it has a chance to be a center of excellence for pediatric eye care, for eye banking and tissue transplantation and other parts of eye care that will help the whole region (Africa). This is because we have been teaching here for so long; we have grown the next generation of teachers. It is time to help them expand and grow eye care and make it more sophisticated throughout the country. So in the short term tackle trachoma, build more capability for the long term and then train others in the country.
Orbis is leading a consortium of the four most respected eye care NGOs in the world. Orbis, Sight Savers, CBM and Fred Hollows Foundation . And we are applying to the MacArthur foundation. It is a USD 100 million grant that will be awarded next year. Then the consortium of four big eye care NGOs can tackle the eye care problem in Western and Eastern Africa.
As a team, we can get to the community level and build the primary care infrastructure, we can help build basic surgical care capability for cataracts, surgery and more fundamental surgeries and then teach at the tertiary centers to do very complicated things. We can take that whole pyramid and look at communities all over East Africa and among the four organizations. It touches every area that really has to be grown to improve eyecare all over Eastern Africa.
Orbis has been working in Ethiopia for the last 20 years. Through its history, it has supported 256 primary eyecare units to fight trachoma and to do community level outreach and screening for children. Currently, it is working to expand the eyecare infrastructure, build more primary and secondary eyecare centers, train surgeons, ophthalmic nurses, and community health.
Furthermore, it has also been involved in the Great Ethiopian Run for many years and organize groups of supporters to come to the run and each of those supporters pledges to raise money at their home community to support work in Ethiopia. So two years ago, Orbis brought almost 100 from Ireland, UK, US, Hong Kong, China, and Macau to the Great Ethiopian Run. This year, it brought about 60. Each of those people has pledged to raise money at home to support work in Ethiopia.
Orbis works a lot through a network of partners here in Ethiopia. Its primary partner is the Ministry of Health. It also partners with other nonprofits and members of the eye health community.
Along these 20 years of work in Ethiopia, the outcome walks back to outputs, to activities, to budget. So we can tell you when we get a budget for a project, what we anticipate to happen and it all flows logically and that helps us a lot with our justification for whether or not a program is successful.
The trachoma impact survey shows that its prevalence is coming down. And presently, Orbis is implementing the SAFE strategy of WHO to tackle blindness. Orbis is focused on proving that our work is effective and carries a lot of credibility, both with ministries of health and with the communities where it works. “There is no more rewarding career than to wake up in the morning knowing that you are going to help people.”
Since Orbis set up its first office in Ethiopia 21 years ago, more than 20 long term training programs have been offered to different teaching hospitals on different subspecialties. To keep its commitment, Orbis has organized Hospital Based Program (HBP) from November 18-22, 2019 on pediatric strabismus at Addis Ababa University, Menelik II Hospital with the objective of training local doctors on strabismus surgery with reoperation of strabismus and orthoptic patient evaluation, The Ethiopian Herald has learnt.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 24 November 2019
BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
