I first realised what a remarkable man Dr. Sanduk Ruit is when I interviewed him for The Sydney Morning Herald in 2000. Here was someone who had grown up in a tiny remote village in the Himalayas — a village with no school — and had gone on to become a medical giant of Asia by restoring sight to more than 100,000 people, and counting.
Fourteen years later, when I was dispatched to Kathmandu on work, and Ruit asked if I’d be interested in writing his biography, I knew I’d landed the story of my life.
Born into the lowest tiers of a rigid caste system, Ruit had absolutely nothing to his name: no money, no connections. In a society where success is so often dependent on patrons, he relied on sheer willpower to overcome all the odds and become one of the developing world’s finest doctors.
It was heartbreak that set Ruit on this path. He was just 19, studying for the entrance exams to university when he lost his younger sister, Yang La, to tuberculosis. That terrible loss — as well as the avoidable loss of two other siblings — propelled him towards becoming a doctor.
When he set his sights on gaining a degree, it had to be the best. It was unheard of at the time, but the boy from the border of Tibet won a scholarship to the prestigious King George’s Medical College in Lucknow, and then began turning his dream into reality. After graduating in ophthalmology from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, Ruit would quickly became one of the most sought-after eye doctors in Kathmandu, where he is based, and in time, the world.
His astonishing speed and skill as a surgeon meant he could have commanded a high salary abroad. But he chose to stay on in Nepal and has since dedicated his life to correcting avoidable blindness, which is caused by a variety of factors such as untreated cataract, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma or age-related macular degeneration. He took on a system which was willing to ignore the poor and the forgotten, pioneering a way to help tens of thousands of people see again through his unique stitch-free intraocular eye surgery, which he performs at his hospitals and at remote eye camps throughout Southeast Asia, North Korea, Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal as well as India. According to the 2015 report of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, the prevalence of blindness is 1.2% in Nepal and 0.93% in India.
Horseback house calls
What fascinated me was the lengths Ruit would go to in order to get to his patients. He has flown into North Korea, crossed mountains in Mustang on horseback, waded across rivers, struggled with altitude sickness while operating on the roof of the world in Tibet, and even ridden on the top of buses to get to his patients. Governments around the world have recognised his contribution — Ruit is a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and the Padma Shri, and a member of the National Order of Merit of Bhutan. He has also been honoured by Australia, Cambridge University and New York Hospital.
“Why shouldn’t the poor have as much right to good-quality sight as anyone else in the world?” Ruit, now 65, asks. “Life is so short. If it takes me six hours to get to a village to give sight to 30 people, surely that is a very worthwhile way to spend a day? Right from the start I was convinced that my job is to take medical care to these people — people who some might call children of a lesser god. Because of my background, my family, and where I grew up, I understand them. I have experienced their life.”
One of the first patients I interviewed, Toprasad Sharma, moved me to tears. As we sat in a café near Ruit’s hospital in Kathmandu, he told me how as a boy he had become blind, and after his mother died, had been shunned by his village.
He was so miserable, he explained, that he wanted to die. He decided to give his life one last chance, and made his way by bus to Kathmandu. Life changed for him after he met Ruit. Sharma describes the day Ruit gently unwound the bandages after the operation as “the happiest day of my life.”
Return to the world
“First I looked at the doctor’s face, which was even kinder than his voice. He didn’t look like a city doctor. He had a broad, ruddy face. He could have been a neighbour from where I lived. Then I looked out the window, and I could hardly believe what I saw. I looked up and saw the ridgeline of the mountains! And birds! Buildings! Buses and people everywhere. I could hardly believe it. I felt like I’d returned to the world again.
‘Then I looked in the mirror and looked at my own face. Can you imagine how amazing it is to see your own face and body and hands again after 14 years of not knowing? I was crying with happiness and relief.”
Travelling with Ruit and watching him work in his eye camps were lessons in compassion. Despite operating on more than 60 patients a day, he still tries to talk to each of them, even if it’s just for a few moments.
“Sometimes when they lie down on the operating table, I can feel the pain of their lives. When I see them huddled at the gates of the hospital, or outside the camps, led by their families, I feel glad that I can do something that’s really going to help them,” he says. Unwrapping the bandages a day after the operation remains one of the greatest satisfactions of his life. They squint, and then slowly look at their own clothes and hands. Then, as their line of vision expands, out at faces, neighbours, then further afield to buildings, mountains, the sky. They break into ecstatic smiles or cry with pent-up relief. Some get up to dance.
In a moment, the patient starts looking ten years younger. They come into the eye camp led by someone, hunched, withdrawn, and they leave walking upright, beaming and proud. After more than 20 years in journalism, this transformation is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve witnessed, and I have only Dr. Ruit to thank for it.
The Sydney-based journalist is the author of The Barefoot Surgeon.
