Born on September 4, 1954, Dr. Sanduk Ruit became one of the eye surgeons from Nepal who made the whole country proud through his low cost cataract surgeries. Dr. Ruit was born in the remote mountainous village Olangchung gola that lies in Taplejung district of Nepal. Some years of his schooling was spent in St Robert’s School in Darjeeling and later he completed his School Leaving Certificate from Siddhartha Vanasthali School in Kathmandu, Nepal. Later he went to India for further studies and completed his MBBS from King George’s Medical College, Lucknow and then higher studies at AIIMS, Delhi. He had his research studies in the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States.
During his work in Australia, in 1986, Ruit and Fred Hollows developed a strategy for using inexpensive intraocular lenses to bring small-incision cataract surgery to the developing world. Yet, the lenses still remained expensive for many cataract patients. Ruit along with Fred Hollows founded Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology in 1994.Then came the turning point in the life of Dr. Ruit. In 1995,Ruit developed a new intraocular lens that could be produced far more cheaply as low as 5 USD. As he has restored the eye sight of more than 130,000 people, mostly poor, he is referred to as ‘God of Sight’. Many of his surgeries are taken to the remotest mountains where people are too poor and fragile to travel to his clinic in Kathmandu. He pioneered a stitch-free surgical technique known as ‘Ruitectomy’ that let many blind people see.Recipient of numerous awards and honors like Ramon Magsaysay Award, Order of Australia, Padma Shri among others, Dr. Ruit is not only inspiration to Nepali people but also to the entire world population.
