The doctor who took eye surgery to the mountains

The story

Sanduk Ruit was born in a remote mountain area of Nepal. It was so poor that the nearest school was many days away on foot. There were no health posts.

When he was 17, his older sister died of tuberculosis, a lung disease. Her death made him want to be a doctor. A scholarship took him to medical school in India. Then he came home and worked as a government health officer.

Clouds over the eyes

In Nepal, many older people were going blind from cataracts. A cataract is a cloudy patch in the eye. It blocks the light. Surgery can cure it. But people in the mountains had no way to reach a surgeon.

In 1980, Ruit worked on a blindness survey. He met an Australian eye doctor, Fred Hollows. Later, in Australia, Hollows taught him a new method. The surgeon takes out the cloudy lens and puts a tiny plastic lens in its place. Ruit brought the method to Nepal in 1988.

Some Nepali eye surgeons did not like the change. Ruit taught them patiently. Slowly, some came round.

Then he took the work to the villages. He and his team trekked to far-off towns and ran eye camps. Hundreds of people were treated on the spot. The camps were plain, so he found ways to keep the work clean and exact. He also found a way to operate without stitches. Surgery got faster, and people healed sooner.

If you can do it in Nepal, it can be done anywhere in the world.Sanduk Ruit, to Reuters, 2012

• $4for a Tilganga lens, in 2012
• $100+for an imported lens before
• 125,000operations by Ruit himself by 2012

A lens for four dollars

A lens from abroad cost over $100. Few patients could pay that. In 1994, Ruit opened the Tilganga Eye Centre in Kathmandu. It makes its own lenses. By 2012, each one cost about $4.

The centre sells lenses to other countries. That income helps pay for the centre’s work. Patients pay what they can. The poor pay nothing.

Ruit also trains others. By 2006, more than 500 surgeons across Asia had learned his methods. In June 2006, he and his team treated over 1,000 patients in six days in North Korea.

At one camp in eastern Nepal, a woman saw her four-year-old son for the first time. She had been blind when he was born. Ruit says she grabbed the boy and wept with joy.

In 2006, Ruit won the Ramon Magsaysay Award. It is given in the Philippines to people who serve others in Asia.

How it unfolded

1. 1980Ruit works on a blindness survey and meets Fred Hollows.
2. 1988He brings lens surgery to Nepal.
3. 1994He opens the Tilganga Eye Centre.
4. 2006He wins the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
5. 2012He has done nearly 125,000 operations.

What makes this story special

Many inventors try to make things better. Ruit tried to make them cheaper. Cutting the price of a lens from over $100 to about $4 put surgery within reach of the poor.

He also built something that lasts. Lens sales and paying patients help cover free care, and he trains other surgeons to do the same.

What we can learn

Sources

• Ramon Magsaysay Award FoundationRuit, Sanduk (2006 awardee profile)
• Nepali TimesThe vision thing (editorial, 2006)
• Reuters (via Fox News)Procedure pioneered by surgeon brings vision back to thousands (2012)

Fact-check note: The sources agree on the main story. They differ on small points. The nearest school was eleven days away on foot (Magsaysay Foundation) or a week’s walk (Nepali Times), so the story says many days. Lens prices are under $5 (Magsaysay Foundation, 2006) and about $4, against more than $100 for an imported lens (Reuters, 2012). The story uses the Reuters figures and treats them as 2012 numbers, which may be out of date. The 125,000 operations is Ruit’s own count as given to Reuters. The Magsaysay Foundation says he learned the new method from Hollows in Australia; the Nepali Times says the 1980 blindness survey first brought them together; the story uses both. The woman who saw her son is Ruit’s own account. The lens count is given as nearly 1.5 million and as exported, so the story leaves it out. Lines marked “Our take” are interpretation. Everything else comes from the sources above.