The concept of Orbis began in the late 1960s when Dr. David Paton, a renowned US ophthalmologist, was a faculty member of The Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins. After extended experiences abroad, Dr. Paton recognized the lack of eye care and ophthalmic teaching in developing nations where blindness was widespread. It concerned him because 90% of the world’s avoidable blindness occurs in the developing world, so someone needed to try to close this gap.