A remarkable Nepalese doctor has restored the vision of over 100,000 of the world’s poorest blind people with a simple yet revolutionary five minute procedure. Millions of people in poor countries have impaired vision due to cataracts, and traditionally there was no hope for them to ever recover their sight. But Dr Ruit Sanduk has pioneered a simple cataract microsurgery technique that costs only €22 per patient and is virtually always successful. Indeed, his “Nepal method” is now taught in US and European medical schools. Dr Ruit was raised in a remote Himalayan village, which inspired him to devote his life to healing and serving those without access to modern hospitals.  

In the West, cataract surgery is typically performed with complex machines, but these are unaffordable in poor countries. So Dr Ruit devised his simple microsurgery to remove cataracts without sutures. Making a small incision into the patient’s eye, Dr Ruit removes the offending cataract, then inserts a tiny, inexpensive lens to replace the affected part of the eye. A patch is applied after surgery, and then removed the next day when, to everyone’s delight, the patient’s vision is restored. At first sceptics denounced or mocked his innovations, but then the American Journal of Ophthalmology published a study showing that Dr Ruit’s technique had exactly the same outcome (98 percent success) as the Western machines – but so much faster and less expensive.

Dr Ruit co-founded the Tilganga Hospital in Kathmandu where he continues to perform surgery, teach, and manage the hospital’s manufacture of the advanced lenses needed for his transformative eye surgery. Every year he travels to some of the poorest countries in the world to perform this incredible surgery, not only restoring his patients’ sight, but also teaching other doctors how to use the same, simple procedure. His vision, skill and determination have made an incalculable difference to hundreds of thousands of lives.