We support access to essential medical care services, especially for vulnerable or impoverished groups. Our long-term commitments include the following initiatives, many of which see the participation of our employees.
Cathay Pacific Wheelchair Bank
Working with the Faculty of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Prince of Wales Hospital, the Wheelchair Bank was set up in 1996 to raise funds to purchase specially adapted wheelchairs for children with neuromuscular diseases. To date, more than HK$9.5 million has been donated to the Wheelchair Bank, which has helped around 330 children, supported more than 2,300 clinic attendances and handled over 4,200 spare-part changes and modifications.
Project ORBIS
Since 1989, Cathay Pacific has been a major sponsor of ORBIS which owns the world's only flying eye hospital. We provide free and discounted air travel for ORBIS personnel, enabling eye care professionals to join the Flying Eye Hospital before it departs to remote places in developing countries such as China, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Myanmar, as well as conducting capacity building programmes for these places in raising their eye care standards.
UNICEF Change for Good
Cathay Pacific and United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) have been engaging passengers in this inflight fundraising programme since 1991 to fund education and healthcare programmes in over 150 developing countries. Since the programme's inception, more than HK$100 million has been collected.
A 20th anniversary road show and charity sale was held in Hong Kong throughout August and September to help raise awareness about the programme. The road show displayed photographs from the 2010 Kenya and Ethiopia field visits to projects which benefited from the donations.
"[Through the Change for Good frield visit] I was able to put myself in the children's shoes and fully understood their struggle with poverty."
Kylie Tan
Inflight Services Department
