Yes, we make that claim, and dare anyone to challenge it!


Dr. Sanduk Ruit


         At 61 he’s treated 120,000 patients and has a 98% success rate.

   Further, its cost per person is $25 or $50, depending²…


[To understand more, or challenge, use the DOOR.]




   Our report comes from Nicolas D. Kristof who writes for The New York Times¹.

   Dr. Ruit is an ophthalmologist who grew up in a remote part Nepal and studied medicine in India. His job: restoring eyesight to the poor and taking his model of healing to low-income countries.

   “If you’re a blind person in a poor country, traditionally you have no hope. But Ruit has pioneered a simple cataract surgery that costs only $25 per patient [per eye] and is virtually always successful. Indeed, his ‘Nepal method’ is now taught in U.S. medical schools,” reports Kristof.

   Skeptics at first seriously questioned his innovations. But then, after a study (using a randomized trial) found that Ruit’s technique had exactly the same outcome (measured 6 months later) as the “western machines” that do the same thing. Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, an eye specialist at the University of Utah’s Morgan Eye Center, reports that Ruit’s “results are fantastic.” Tabin also said that when machines can’t be used (if, for example, the cataract is too large), the standard [alternative] American procedure is actually inferior to Ruit’s. (Tabin, also a mountain climber, now leads the Himalayan Cataract Project.)

   For still more, simply google  “Dr. Ruit.” He has a fascinating personal history.


   ¹ Our NYT source for all specific details from the Nov. 13, 2015 Scranton Times-Tribune. This only briefly addresses Kristof’s full-page column (which I read three times).

   ² It’s strongly implied that the rate is $25 per eye. And when Dr. Ruit’s equipment–using a microscope–and simple surgery tools is set up, the procedure (per eye) is only 5 minutes.