Dr. Sanduk Ruit, a True Nepalese Hero

Yesterday, I got a pleasantly surprising mail from an unknown fan of our website. And here’s a post about the topic which was brought to my attention by her, thanking her for a very kind mail and the information.

            It seems like we, Nepalese are on a roll to win international awards. It seems like yesterday, Anuradha Koirala won “CNN Hero of the Year”. Prabal Gurung is winning so many awards. Ms. Indra Ban won “Order of Australia”. And it is on like Donkey Kong.

            Sanduk Ruit was born in a remote village in Eastern Nepal. So remote, the nearest school was a week’s walk away. Ruit’s sister died of tuberculosis when he was 17. This led him to become an eye doctor and he works effortlessly to restore eyesight for the forgotten in Nepal. Dr Sanduk Ruit for CNN Hero of the Year 2011 is a campaign to get him nominated! Please refer to their facebook page for more information!

And I was doing some info-digging for the post, I realize I have met this person :D. Feeling slightly enlightened, I am gladder than ever to have come across writing this post. My family from my dad’s side have hereditary eye problems. My grandma had cataract surgery(Motibindu ko operation) later in her life. So did my dad. And my grandma’s dad had gone blind at his later age because cataract surgery wasn’t possible those days.I had very frequent allergies and severe eye infections in my eyes till the mid teens. It had made growing up very troublesome and it was more worrying to my parents. In the quest to fixing the trouble, travelling from hospital to hospital, now I remember I had seen Dr. Sanduk Ruit in Tilganga Hospital and he had been my doctor for years.  Also whenever Fred Hollows ad was on TV, here in Australia, I had a feeling that the guy who says “He says he can see quite well” was vaguely familiar to me.

Cataract eye surgery is easy but expensive(it could cost as much as $8000 in the west but thanks to all the charity works and Dr. Ruit, people get it done for free. And for most of them, free is the only cost they can afford.) But due to lack of information and proper resources, an estimated 150,000 people in Nepal are blind because of cataracts.  But at the same time, Nepal has one of the highest rates of curable blindness anywhere in the world along with the world’s highest cataract blindness. “One doctor in particular has been making remarkable progress in treating cataracts - and setting the example for many other developing countries, where 90 per cent of the world's blind reside. Sanduk Ruit, the Nepalese surgeon some call the "God of Sight", has removed 100,000 cataracts over his 30-year career. As the surgeon's mobile eye camp received patients at a monastery in Dhading, hundreds of people, most of whom had never seen a doctor before, had travelled for days by bicycle, motorbike, bus and even on their relatives' backs to get an appointment” says an Aljazeera report.

Mentored by legendary Dr. Fred Hollows, Dr. Sanduk Ruit is a Nepali eye surgeon whose innovative small-incision cataract surgery with the use of inexpensive intraocular lenses has enabled hundreds of thousands of poor cataract patients of Nepal and other countries to regain their sight. In June 2006, Dr. Ruit was awarded with the Ramon Magsaysay Award (the Asian Nobel prize). He has won Thailand's Prince Mahidol Award 2007. He was born in 1955 to uneducated parents in the remote Olangchungola Pass in Taplejung District of northeast Nepal, a mountain area of Nepal so poor and remote that the nearest school was eleven days away by foot^[2] However, his father, a small time businessman, placed a priority on providing education to his children, and sent Dr Ruit to St Robert’s School in Darjeeling for studies and also provided financial support in his early medical career.

            Extremely down-to-earth and friendly, Dr. Ruit's childhood dream was that of becoming a pilot during his schooldays. But knowing the death of his elder brother before his birth was due to diarrhoea, and being with his younger sister when she died of tuberculosis in 1964, and suffering the loss of another younger sister of pneumonia all worked to change his heart. "That pinched my heart and I decided to become a doctor,” the eyesight specialist stated.

            Dr. Fred Hollows foundation still works actively all around the world, especially in third world countries, providing them with cheap eye-sight restoration and also providing them with glasses, most of which are manufactured right in Nepal.(Surkhet, I believe). Interestingly enough Dr. Ruit joined with a few people who shared his vision to start the Tilganga Eye Centre on June 7, 1994, but due to opposition by the establishment who considered the technique too risky, they virtually operated underground for six months. His efficient model of eye care is now practiced in many parts of the world, with U.S. military surgeons being scheduled to be trained under Dr. Ruit as well. Dr. Ruit is passionate about being able to do much good for so many people in a short time and see the results, and while the work is technically very demanding he stated that he loves microsurgery very much.  He also credits his wife, an ophthalmic nurse whom he married in 1987, as being a pillar of strength to him in his difficult days while pursuing his dream project of Tilganga.

            
           Here in the birthplace of Dr. Fred Hollows, on 18 May 2007, Ruit was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia(the same award Ms. Ban recently received), "for service to humanity by establishing eye care services in Nepal and surrounding countries, and for his work in teaching and training surgeons, and technical innovation".  

            Having earned many titles such as “God of Sight” and having worked in many other countries including highly controlled North Korea, Dr. Ruit has been featured in many articles and TV shows everywhere including the National Geographic, CNN, Aljazeera and The Washington Post! This article is nowhere near enough to describe his total achievements. Keep in touch with his facebook page please and keep those fingers ready to get tapping as soon as the voting begins. Two “CNN Hero of the Year” awards for Nepal! Let’s make it happen!