Doctor has helped cut the rate of treatable blindness in half and was awarded a $1m grant, offering an opportunity for growth MANAMA: A Nepalese doctor has received Bahrain’s prestigious Isa Award for Service to Humanity for pioneering a mortality-reducing cataract procedure that has saved thousands of lives in his home country and beyond. Dr. Sanduk Ruit, an ophthalmologist with more than 35 years’ experience, was awarded by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa on Tuesday morning. In the fifth round of the awards, $1 million was granted to the doctor, who developed a low-cost small-incision cataract surgery technique that has helped restore eyesight to more than 180,000 people in Bahrain and several developing nations around the world, including Ethiopia, Turkiye, North Korea, Vietnam, China, Egypt and more. The laureate was announced as the recipient of the prestigious award last month. “We are happy to celebrate the exemplary humanitarian work done by Sanduk Ruit with you all,” said King Hamad, addressing the ceremony. “If you look back 25-30 years ago, the prevalence of cataracts was one in 0.5 percent of the population and today it’s at 0.2 percent and that’s why it was important for us to move outside Nepal,” Ruit told Arab News at a press conference. “Nepal represents one country in the developing world where the quality of cataract surgery is extremely high. If you look at the demography of Nepal, you’ll see a lot of people from the Indian subcontinent coming for cataract surgery in Nepal. A massive exodus. That’s why my aim is to take the system that we have, the know-how and streamline it as it is quite good to scale up to other countries where the need is so high.” According to Ruit, the system is simple: Perform cataract surgeries with intra-ocular lens implants that can be mass-produced locally at a much-reduced cost. “We discovered that the cost of producing lenses in areas such as Europe and the West could cost up to $200 in a few years, and upon realizing that we can mass create the lenses locally using the same high-grade quality materials, the cost was reduced to $4.” Ruit, founder of the Tilganga Eye Center and co-founder of the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation, is on a mission to cure half a million people of needless blindness in the developing world by 2030. FASTFACT Cataracts are caused by a buildup of protein that clouds the eye’s lens, which can lead to blurred vision and eventual blindness. According to the WHO, 180 million people across the globe are visually disabled, 40-50 million of whom are blind. Though the procedures Ruit and his team of doctors and trainees have conducted are free of charge, he believes that streamlining the process of manufacturing lenses locally not only makes a difference to the person suffering, but it also lessens the burden of living with a disability, enabling the visually impaired and their families to become participating members of the community. Due to his innovation, Ruit was also able to develop a surgical technique that minimizes the adverse effects of the surgery as well as shortens the recovery period. “It is a matter of our happiness and pride as the board of trustees of the position the award has achieved on the global scene. Through the high demand we see and the humanitarian work we received, 139 individuals and institutions applied for the Isa Award for Service to Humanity,” said Sheikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa, special representative to King Hamad. “Treating thousands of patients who are blind without charge is a lofty humanitarian act worthy of emulation in all areas of giving, so the board of trustees decided that he (Ruit) be awarded. and today he is honored by the grace of your majesty, may God preserve and protect you, by granting it to him, and we all congratulate him, wishing him all success in continuing giving.”