Doctor on mission to eradicate blindness in Nepal

Just next to Nepal's Mayadevi temple, known as the place where Buddha was born more than 2,600 years ago, hundreds of people wait outside a makeshift hospital in hope that their fading eyesight will be restored.

They are waiting for their appointment with eye surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit, pioneer of an innovative and inexpensive cataract surgery camp that has earned him many awards.

His assembly line style of surgery at a temporary hospital in Lumbini has made it possible for nearly 400 patients to get their cataracts removed in just three days.

"My passion and love is to see there remain no people with unnecessary blindness in this part of the world," Ruit, who is also known as Nepal's "god of sight," said.

Cataracts, which form a white film that cloud the eye's natural lens, commonly occur in older people but also sometimes affect children or young adults.

Exposure to harsh ultraviolet radiation, especially at high altitudes as in Nepal, is a major risk factor.

Many people in Nepal, most of them poor, have benefited from Ruit's work.

He regularly visits remote villages high in the mountains and low lands of the Himalayan nation, taking with him a team of experts and equipment bringing surgery to their villages.

He has performed more than 130,000 cataract surgeries so far.

"The doctor is a god for me he has given me a new life," said Satindra Nath Tripathi, one of Ruit's patients. "The world was completely dark on one side for me but now I have new life and new sight."

Ruit began his work in 1984 when the surgery was done by removing the entire cloudy cataract and giving thick glasses.

He pioneered a simple technique where he removes the cataract without stitches through small incisions and replaces them with a low-cost artificial lens.

The low cost intraocular lenses are produced for $7 (USD) apiece at the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology in the capital Kathmandu, which Ruit founded in 1994.

Ruit's average surgery costs about $100 (USD) but is free for those who can't afford it.

Patients rarely have to spend the night at the hospital.

Ruit now aims to expand his work, taking it to as many countries as possible targeting 500,000 surgeries in the next five years.

"We will be able to make possible in Nepal in one to two years, everybody who needs cataract surgery will have cataract surgery irrespective of the fact whether they will be able to pay or not," he says. "And we will scale it up globally to other parts of the world where it is needed."

(Image Credit: AP)