An aircraft housing a specialist eye hospital is to visit Dublin airport later this month to promote its sight-saving charity work in developing countries around the world.
Orbis, the world's only flying eye hospital, is a converted DC-10-10ER.
It will land in Dublin airport from New Dehli, India, on March 28th and stay for a week to highlight its work and host tours of the eye hospital as a thank you to Irish supporters.
Orbis was set up in 1982 and works closely with the London-based International Centre for Eye Health. The charity's aim is to eliminate avoidable blindness in developing countries.
Some 37 million people worldwide are blind. Some 28 million do not need to be as the skills and technology to cure or treat them already exits, according to Orbis.
Orbis' volunteer medical staff have trained over 70,0000 local medical professionals in 76 countries and given 17.5 million people back their sight. It has established permanent country programme offices in five nations - Banlgladesh, China, Ethiopia, India and Vietnam.
Among the volunteers visiting Dublin airport are two Irish nurses, Ann Marie Ablett from Co Roscommon and Mairead English from Tipperary.
Dublin Airport Director Robert Hilliard said he was delighted Orbis has chosen Dublin airport to showcase its work.