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Orbis leader united people around cause of blindness prevention
Oliver Foot died at age 61, leaving the organization widely supported and successful.
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Oliver Foot, president and board member of Orbis International, died Feb. 6. He was 61.
“Oliver Foot’s legacy is an international organization spread across 80 countries around the world, which is a real family of people committed to one common cause: to eradicate unnecessary blindness,” Geoffrey Holland, Orbis International executive director and chief executive officer, told Ocular Surgery News in a telephone interview.
“I would only wish that I or my children could develop careers and develop a life, a vigorous life, that would leave the impact that Oliver left,” said Brian C. Leonard, MD, an Orbis volunteer and Orbis International board member.
Mr. Foot, who was born in Jamaica, joined Orbis as executive director in 1982. He was named president in 1987, according to a press release from the organization.
Orbis is an international nonprofit organization aimed at preventing global blindness. The organization sends its flying eye hospital around the world to train physicians, nurses and other professionals to treat sight-threatening diseases.
In addition to serving on the Orbis International board, Mr. Foot served on the Orbis Canada and Orbis Taiwan boards, as well as the Orbis Charitable Trust in the United Kingdom, the release said.
Mr. Foot is specifically credited with leading fundraising efforts and facilitating partnerships with world leaders. Orbis has raised more than $200 million and gained the support of many influential leaders, including former Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton, according to the release.
“His goal was to do everything he could to eradicate unnecessary blindness and … the more time went by, the more it was realized how much more was needed,” Mr. Holland said. “The growth was in response to the need, and it was fulfilling the need that he was committed to. He would have been happy if we’d wiped out blindness and put ourselves out of business.”
Building on an organization
When Mr. Foot joined Orbis, the organization had just recently flown its first plane, according to Mr. Holland. The idea of a mobile teaching eye hospital had been conceived years earlier by David Paton, MD, and developed by Dr. Paton, Betsy Trippe DeVecchi, Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe and FlightSafety International founder A.L. Ueltschi, according to the Orbis Web site.
Mr. Foot was the executive director of Orbis for 5 years, until he was named president. Much of the development of the organization after this point has been credited to him.
 In 2004, Oliver Foot arrives in Mandalay, Myanmar to conduct a Flying Eye Hospital program. |  Oliver Foot conducts a tour of the Flying Eye Hospital for visiting dignitaries from the People’s Commission of Da Nang City, Vietnam. |
| Image: Saine PJ | Image: Saine PJ |
 Oliver Foot visits the pediatric ward of the National Institute of Ophthalmology, the leading eye care hospital in Vietnam, in 2005. |  In 2006, Oliver Foot traveled the Southern region of Ethiopia where Orbis is working to address the high prevalence of avoidable blindness and its causes. |
| Image: Orbis International | Image: Orbis International |
“He took it from its original concept — more than a concept, from its original basis — and he just loved it and nurtured it and helped it to grow. And under his leadership, it grew from being a wonderful flying eye hospital that went to many, many countries doing surgical training into an organization that encompassed really large-scale blindness prevention programs in many countries,” Mr. Holland said.
“He recognized that there was more to Orbis … than doctors exchanging skills with doctors,” Dr. Leonard said. In places such as China and India, where the organization had been instrumental in establishing eye care centers, Mr. Foot recognized that many people were still going blind, he said.
“Although we’ve turned the corner on those numbers and we’re beginning to experience a reduction in the number of preventably blind people, his vision was shifted towards capacity building,” Dr. Leonard said.
In 1987, Orbis had about 35 employees based in New York. Today, the organization employs more than 200, working out of offices in more than 10 countries and coordinating the efforts of multiple programs, Mr. Holland said.
Orbis has trained more than 150,000 ophthalmology professionals in 85 countries and today runs year-round educational programs in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India and Vietnam, according to the Orbis Web site. The various programs and projects have overseen the treatment of more than 4.4 million people for diseases including cataracts, corneal blindness, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, orbital tumors and trauma, retinoblastoma, retinopathy of prematurity, strabismus and trachoma.
‘A wonderful people person’
Mr. Holland named Mr. Foot’s encouragement of team members and ability to delegate as instrumental in his ability to help Orbis grow. Dr. Leonard pointed to his intelligence and impressive organizational skills.
“He stayed on top of everything,” Dr. Leonard said. “He had things under control.”
But of all the attributes that enabled Mr. Foot to lead, “his greatest strength really was that he was just a wonderful people person,” Mr. Holland said.
“He connected with everybody; it didn’t matter if it was a president or a king or a guy on the street or a woman on the street. He just seemed to empathize with people, whoever they were,” he said.
“He truly valued the company of other people and the collaboration of other people, and it didn’t matter who you were,” Dr. Leonard said.
Although he was committed to preventing unnecessary blindness by facilitating adequate eye care, Mr. Foot’s dedication went beyond this premise, Mr. Holland said.
“His passion was to see people happy and unite people in friendship,” he said.
“His efforts were, of course, the elimination or reduction of preventable blindness worldwide, but on top of that, he had a sense of fairness, a sense of politics,” Dr. Leonard said. Through Orbis, Mr. Foot tried to bring people of different ethnicities and beliefs together for a common cause, he said.
In the Orbis press release, Mr. Foot was quoted as once saying, “Orbis is at the heart of what life is all about — promoting cooperation and understanding through serving others. What better way could there be to help heal our divided world?”
“If there’s anything he would want, it would be for us all and all the people involved in blindness prevention to really work, redouble our efforts to make sure that people are not unnecessarily suffering from blindness because most of it is curable; most of it is preventable,” Mr. Holland said.
For more information:
- Geoffrey Holland can be reached at Orbis International, 520 8th Ave., 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018; 646-674-5500; Web site: www.orbis.org. Brian C. Leonard, MD, can be reached at University of Ottawa Eye Institute, Ottawa Hospital, 501 Smyth Road, 3rd Floor, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1H 8L6; 613-737-8574; e-mail: bleonard@ ottawahospital.on.ca.
- Jessica Loughery is an OSN Staff Writer who covers all aspects of ophthalmology.