LONDON, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- For World Sight Day 2022, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation, an NGO founded by Nepalese 'God of Sight' Dr Sanduk Ruit and London philanthropist Tej Kohli, has announced the results of its first projects in Bhutan and Ghana. 1,619 patients have been screened at two surgical outreach camps in Bhutan in August, where 246 people were cured of blindness over a six-day period, with Dr Sanduk Ruit performing 171 surgeries. 444 patients have been cured of blindness in Ghana at an inaugural surgical outreach camp in September, marking the NGOs first move into Africa.
Needless blindness remains a public health challenge throughout the developing world that worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic when eye health services faced severe disruption and delay. Tej Kohli has committed to spending a portion of his wealth eradicating this needless blindness from low-income communities. Since launching their NGO in March 2021, Ruit and Kohli have already screened 164,616 people and cured 21,159 of cataract blindness in Nepal, Bhutan and Ghana. In November their NGO will start to cure blindness at scale in Tanzania, followed by Indonesia, Cambodia and Laos. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation aspires to cure as many as 500,000 of cataract blindness in the developing world by 2030.
In Bhutan the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation is seeking to completely eliminate cataract blindness from the Kingdom in a joint project with the Ministry of Health. Bhutan has already achieved a 33% reduction in blindness since its first Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness (RAAB) survey in 2009. Now a joint program of outreach and surgical interventions combined with the training of new ophthalmologic surgeons will seek to clear the backlog of 10,460 people who are currently awaiting cataract surgery.
In Ghana 54.8% of all blindness is due to cataracts but the average cataract surgical rate of 523 surgeries per million of population falls well below the WHO target of 3,000 per million. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation will cure 1,000 of blindness in the country by the end of 2022 and will ramp up its efforts throughout 2023. In Tanzania the NGO will also provide medical training to improve the rate of success of cataract surgeries in the country, which stands at 58.7% compared to a global average of 85%.
Tej Kohli, co-founder of the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation said:
"World Sight Day 2022 is an opportunity to take stock of the many NGOs like ours who are contributing toward global efforts to prevent and cure the unnecessary blindness that restrains social and economic progress in the developing world. We know that the socio-economic return of curing someone of blindness in a low-income country is 1,500% of the cost of surgery in just one year. That is very good value in terms of impact. I hope the international community will soon play a bigger role in spreading this impact further."
About the Tej Kohli &Ruit Foundation
The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation is a restricted fund operating under the auspices of Prism The Gift Fund, registered UK charity number 1099682. The Foundation targets the #1 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of reducing poverty by making large-scale surgical interventions to cure blindness at the grassroots in the developing world. All treatments are provided completely free, with 100% of the funding coming from Tej Kohli and the Kohli family.
For more information visit:
Website: www.tejkohliruit.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tejkohliruit/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tej-kohli-ruit-foundation/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tejkohliruitfoundation
Medium: https://tejkohliruitfoundation.medium.com/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tkrfoundation
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