Co-Founder of Tilganga Eye Center in Nepal to Visit Moran Eye Center
February 10, 2006 - Salt Lake City, Utah. Dr. Sanduk Ruit, MD, Co-Founder of the Tilganga Eye Center, in Katmandu, Nepal will visit the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah February 15-17. Ruit was the first Nepali doctor to perform cataract surgery with intraocular lens implants. He believes in the right of people with treatable blindness to have their sight restored, and that people in developing countries deserve access to the same quality of optical care as those in the developed world. And he backs up his belief. Since his first surgery in 1994 more than 95,000 individuals have received the gift of sight through intraocular implants at the Tilganga Eye Center and its satellite locations.
People in the Himalayan region often develop blinding cataracts as a result of exposure to intense ultra violet light at high altitude. Before surgery was made available, when these individuals lost their sight, it was common for them to be shunned as non-productive members of society. Left to fend for themselves, they commonly died an early and tragic death as a result of starvation, disease and accidents. To people in this region, the miracle of modern cataract surgery means not only a restoration of sight, but also the gift of life.
Ruit grew up in a remote village in Nepal and is a graduate of King George's Medical College in India. He completed his ophthalmology residency at the esteemed All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He also completed fellowships in microsurgery in the Netherlands and Australia, and trained at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of Michigan.
In addition to the Himalayan region, Ruit has expanded his services to other developing countries. He and a team from Tilganga performed the first modern cataract surgery in North Korea last year, restoring sight to nearly 1,000 people and training and equipping the country's first microsurgeons.
Ruit has worked closely with Dr. Geoff Tabin, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and Director of the Division of International Ophthalmology at the Moran Eye Center. Harvard educated Tabin spends at least three months each year in Asia working with his Nepalese counterparts. Ruit and Tabin believe the future of eye care services in developing countries lies in training ophthalmologists within the local community. With this goal in mind, a plan is underway to allow University of Utah Ophthalmology students to spend three months in Nepal, while a reciprocal program will bring doctors from the Himalayan region to train at the University of Utah.
"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."
Ruit and Tabin were the recipients of the prestigious 2005 Pacesetter Award, presented by New York Hospital, Queens. The award was presented at Lincoln Center and honored the doctors for their humanitarian efforts to treat blinding eye diseases in the poorest mountain villages of Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan, Himalayan India and Pakistan.
Ruit and Tabin will present a lecture that is open to students and the general public in the Moran Eye Center first floor Auditorium on Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 11:00 A.M. They will be available for pre-scheduled media interviews February 16 and 17. For information and to schedule a media interview with Dr. Ruit and Dr. Tabin, please contact: Steve Brown, Communications Manager, Moran Eye Center, 801/587-7693, steven.brown@hsc.utah.edu.