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 Dr.Ruit in yahoo news
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Posted on 10-04-06 11:14 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Nepali eye surgeon brings sight to tens of thousands

by Sam Taylor Wed Oct 4, 2:52 PM ET

KATHMANDU (AFP) - Sanduk Ruit needs just seven minutes to cut away a cataract and restore sight for destitute people. With 50,000 operations under his belt he wants to do the delicate procedure thousands of times more.
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In the last 15 years, the remote Himalayan nation of Nepal has seen at least 13 government changes, a bloody Maoist revolt, a palace massacre and a royal takeover.

Through it all Ruit has been quietly tackling preventable blindness at home and in other developing countries giving him a place of pride as an example for Nepal, one of the 10 poorest nations in the world.

Ruit, 53, is a shy man with intense focus who shuns the limelight and is reticent to talk about his good work. But he hasn't escaped local attention and was lauded in a recent editorial in the English-language weekly newspaper the Nepali Times.

"If sometimes we feel hopeless about our country's future we just need to look at visionaries like Ruit," editor Kunda Dixit wrote.

Ruit got his start as an eye surgeon with assistance from an Australian charity. He set up a small eye clinic in Kathmandu in 1994 designed to treat 60 people per day, and which has since expanded to a daily 600 patients.

The Tilganga Eye Centre runs an eye bank and operates eye camps in remote parts of Nepal where around 6,000 people per year receive sight-restoring cataract operations.

The eye camps have proved so successful that his centre has run them in Bhutan,
North Korea, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China and India.

Removing cataracts is the most common surgical practice and the clouding of the lens in the eye is the leading form of blindness in the developing world.

A cataract forms when protein in the lens between the pupil and the retina at the back of the eye starts to clump together, clouding vision and, if untreated, eventually causing blindness.

The causes of cataracts are unknown, but they are widely seen as something brought on by the aging process.

Factors thought to increase the chance of developing cataracts include childhood malnutrition and poor hygiene, said Bhagirat Baniya, the eye clinic's chief administrator.

Pictures on the walls of smiling North Koreans with patches on their eyes attest to the fact that his organization is determined to go wherever needed.

"Dr Ruit is a most outstanding surgeon and has probably done more intra-ocular lens surgery than anyone else on the planet," said Gabi Hollows, widow of Doug Hollows, Ruit's Australian mentor.

Ruit was born into a poor family in rural Nepal. His father paid for primary school in the eastern Indian city of Darjeeling and a government scholarship allowed him to study medicine in India.

He qualified as an eye specialist before returning to Nepal and eventually meeting Hollows.

His interest in medicine was piqued at the age of 17 for very personal reasons.

"One of my elder sisters was getting treatment for tuberculosis which was very serious in those days. She developed resistance to most of the available medicines and I saw her die in front of me. That got into my head pretty strongly," said Ruit.

At an early stage in his career in the 1980s, he met Australian eye surgeon Doug Hollows, and the two continued to be close friends until Hollows's death from cancer in 1992.

Hollows and Ruit shared the belief that modern surgical techniques and equipment from developed countries could be adapted for use in developing countries, where blinding cataracts were widespread.

"We knew that if we could do it in Nepal, we could do it anywhere," Ruit said.

With massive levels of poverty, dismal infrastructure and a majority of the population living in remote rural areas, Ruit and Hollows initially faced huge challenges in the mountainous country.

"We really struggled in the beginning and went to eye camps and started to fine tune the surgical technique and try to find out how equipment could be simplified," said Ruit.

The technique perfected by Ruit and Hollows involves the removal of a clouded lens from the eye and replacing it with a special plastic lens.

After thousands of operations, the surgeons have the operation down to a tee. They take between seven and 10 minutes per eye, and the procedure "has a 100 percent success rate, if it's done properly," said Baniya, the hospital administrator.

Instead of stitches, electricity is used to seal the hole in the eye caused by the surgery, reducing the risk of infection when operating in makeshift clinics in remote areas.

The cost of the plastic lenses was initially prohibitively expensive, so Hollows and Ruit planned to open a lab to produce their own high-quality, low-cost lenses.

Hollows did not live to see it, but eventually, after two-and-a-half years of trial and error, the lab started successfully producing lenses in 1996.

"In 1995 when we had to import the lenses, they were 85 dollars. Now we sell them for four dollars," said Baniya.

The 65 people who work in the lab produce a huge surplus of lenses which they sell to 35 developing countries at cost.

A massive picture of Hollows dominates the corridor leading to the high-tech lens lab named after him that adjoins the clinic, and Ruit's affection for the New Zealand-born Australian remains firm.

"He was not only a mentor, he was a good friend. He was very straightforward and he loved people from developing countries," Ruit said.

Poverty-stricken Nepal is riven with profound caste, political, gender and ethnic divisions. But Ruit has never let it get in the way of his work.

"With all the political upheaval he has never turned a hair. For him the priority has always been the next person in line to be given back their sight," said Gabi Hollows, who continues to be involved in the Fred Hollows Foundation.

In June, Ruit was given the Ramon Magsaysay award, popularly known as the Asian Nobel prize.

Ruit accepted the award but went straight back to work, preparing for the clinic's next eye camp due to be held in Bhutan.

"We don't like to have a high profile. After the award I preferred to get back to work rather than do interviews," Ruit said.
 
Posted on 10-04-06 11:58 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Good Jo Dr. Sanduk
At least a good Nepali to be proud of. If you can find the documentary on National Geography with Lisa Ling about his work on the Mustang region, it's must for every Nepali. I'm pretty sure you can buy it from their web store.
 


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