Dr Sanduk Ruit & Mr Tej Kohli unite to combat cataract blindness in the world’s poorest communities by screening 1,000,000 and curing 300,000 by 2026.
This new alliance will unite the longstanding missions of Dr Sanduk Ruit and Tej Kohli to combat blindness by closing the pervasive treatment gap within the world’s poorest communities. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation will combine Ruit’s technical expertise for delivering High volume low-cost cataract surgeries with Kohli’s experience of funding grassroots projects worldwide. 100% of the operating costs will be funded by Tej Kohli and the Tej Kohli Foundation.
Tej Kohli and Sanduk Ruit are firmly united in their new joint fight to cure blindness, with new mission to screen 1,000,000 and cure 300,000 by 2026. In March 2021 the new Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation conducted its first high volume cataract outreach surgeries in the highly symbolic location of Lumbini in Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha, where the not-for-profit organization screened 900 patients and cured 312 of cataract blindness during a four-day mission. A second surgical camp in Solukhumbu, in the foothills of Mount Everest, occurred just a few days after Lumbini Surgical camp and completed surgeries so that a further 171 people were cured of blindness.
The Tej Kolhi & Ruit Foundation also plans to dispatch its outreach teams on missions to deliver free cataract surgeries in territories including Nepal, Northern India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, North Korea, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Lebanon and Syria. Each mission will see the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation create community eye treatment camps to treat hundreds of local people for free.
Sanduk Ruit said :
“Unfortunately, there remains a huge need in the world for the kind of accessible free treatments that we will provide. Now we have the passion, expertise and resources to tackle this problem on a completely new scale. For Tej Kohli and I this is about achieving something greater than we could ever dare to have imagined. We have already identified 40,000 future patients in Nepal and 40,000 in India.”
Tej Kohli said:
“Second chances matter. When you cure someone of blindness you give them a second chance at life. They can be economically active. They can enjoy and look after their family. Yet millions of people in the world remain blind because they do not have access to treatment. This alliance with Sanduk Ruit means that we focus on potentially helping over a million people in need.”
