Ophthalmologist Omar Salamanca demonstrates operating technique Saturday, Aug. 3, to colleagues aboard the Flying Eye Hospital, a remodeled airplane operated by New York-based Orbis International, a nonprofit that fights avoidable blindness in developing countries all over the world. Soon Salamanca will fly to Vietnam to train local doctors in eye surgery. (Photo by Janis Mara)

Ophthalmologist Omar Salamanca bent over his work, demonstrating a detail of eye surgery for colleagues as they stood inside a Boeing MD-10 airplane at Oakland International Airport.

Salamanca is a staff eye doctor at the Flying Eye Hospital, a converted airplane that has been used to train about 10,000 doctors, administer 12.5 million eye exams and perform 350,000 eye surgeries in developing countries around the world over the past five years.

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