Journey to Sight — shop owner and mother has vision restored| #2030InSight
This month, the Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation traveled to the Kingdom of Bhutan on a mission to eradicate cataract blindness to reduce extreme poverty. This is part of a collaboration between the Foundation, the Bhutanese Ministry of Health, and the Royal Government of Bhutan under the Royal Patronage of Her Majesty Gyalyum Kesang Choeden Wangchuck.
The Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation is committed to curing 1,000 patients of cataract blindness annually for the next 5 years to support the Bhutanese government’s mission to heal the entire backlog of cataract blindness in the country.
The camp was attended by co-founders Dr. Sanduk Ruit & Mr. Tej Kohli. The team organized microsurgical camps over three days in Bhutan while also training local eye health specialists.
Mr. Tej Kohli and Dr. Sanduk Ruit also met with Her Highness Majesty Gyalyum Kesang Choeden Wangchuck, the Royal Queen Grandmother of Bhutan, Prime Minister Dr. Lotay Tshering, and Her Excellency Dechen Wangmo, Health Minister to the Royal Government of Bhutan.
The teams were met with a warm welcome by the officials and delegates, and the program was met with great enthusiasm equally by officials of the health ministry and by those who received surgery.
One of the many who received the life-changing surgery was 47-year-old Dechen.
Dechen had lived a content life in rural Bhutan with her three children. On top of raising her children, she ran a small shop. She was happy with life and with the way things were. That was until three years ago when her vision began to deteriorate.
When her vision began to fail, Dechen worried she would become blind. She started experiencing difficulties seeing in the dark which caused children to worry.
When a Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation screening camp arrived in her village, she was found to be living with cataracts. She was then invited for surgery at the Outreach Microsurgical Eye Camp (OMEC) in Bhutan.
At the camp, her surgery was performed successfully by Dr. Sanduk Ruit, co-founder of the Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation.
The following day Dechen was due to have her eye patches removed. Each Tej Kohli and Ruit outreach camp has become a tradition that each patch removal is a cause for celebration. This tradition continued with Dechen who was extremely happy to receive a second chance to sight. Excited for her mother, Dechen’s daughter and other family members celebrated her restored vision, leading to a small but joyous family reunion.
So far, the Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation has successfully cured 246 people in 2 days in Bhutan.
The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation was founded in March 2021 by London philanthropist Tej Kolhi and Kathmandu ‘God of Sight’ Dr Sanduk Ruit. As of November 2022 the NGO had screened 170,022 patients and cured 22,663of blindness at 91 outreach camps in Nepal, Bhutan and Ghana. 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.
