Moran Eye Center Adjunct Professor receives Asia's version of Nobel prize.

Salt Lake City, Utah
September 7, 2006

From left to right, Dr. Sanduk Ruit, Dr. Randall J Olson, Dr. Geoffrey Tabin

September 7, 2006, Salt Lake City, Utah. The prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award - touted as Asia's version of the Nobel Prize -was awarded to Moran Adjunct Faculty Member Dr. Sanduk Ruit on August 31, 2006 in ceremonies at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The recipient of "Asia's highest honor," Dr. Ruit is the Co-director of the Himalayan Cataract Project together with Moran Surgeon Dr. Geoffrey Tabin. In announcing the award, the Magsaysay Foundation Board said that Dr. Ruit is being honored for "placing Nepal at the forefront of developing safe, effective and economical procedures for cataract surgery, enabling the needlessly blind in even the poorest countries to see again".

The award celebrates the memory and selfless leadership example of the third Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay. Dr. Ruit and the six other 2006 Magsaysay awardees join 249 other laureates who have received Asia's highest honor to date.

At the award presentation ceremonies Ruit was given a citation for opening the Tilganga Eye Centre (TEC) in 1994. In partnership with the Himalayan Cataract Project, TEC today manages six regional primary eye-care centers in Nepal. It operates Nepal's only successful eye bank. It trains eye-care paramedics, medical residents, and nurses as well as visiting surgeons from Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia who come to learn Dr. Ruit's techniques. It also manufactures extremely high-quality intraocular lenses for surgery and manufacturers these once-exorbitant implants-nearly 1.5 million of them so far-available to needy recipients in some fifty countries for less than US $5.00 apiece. Surgery at TEC is inexpensive and prorated according to ability to pay; the poor pay nothing at all. The Centre has performed more than ninety thousand operations since its inception.

Today, Ruit's mobile eye camps have expanded to China, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and even to North Korea, where in June 2006 he and his team performed sight-restoring surgery on over 1,000 patients in six days. "Dr. Ruit is a dedicated physician," Dr. Tabin says. "I met him in 1994 when I was an inexperienced corneal fellow. It was the maiden eye camp for Tilganga. The patients we treated had advanced cataracts as large and hard as dimes. We were using rudimentary microscopes. In four days we completed 238 surgeries. Ruit performed 201, I did 37. Needless to say, he taught me a great deal." Drs. Ruit and Tabin were the recipients of the prestigious 2005 Pacesetter Award, presented by New York Hospital, Queens.

More than five hundred surgeons across Asia have now learned Dr. Ruit's pathbreaking techniques. The citation also included this statement by Dr. Ruit: "We Nepalese have never been known to give anything to other parts of the world. I feel proud that we have given this expertise to many countries. Everyone deserves good vision. There can be no children of a lesser god."

For more information, please visit the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation's website: http://www.rmaf.org.ph/ or contact Moran Eye Center Communications Manager, Steve Brown at 801-587-7693.

Visit our News and Events Archive for a complete list of previous News and Events.