by Ali Gripper
almost as if he had entered another world. The Dalai Lama’s
touch was like receiving an electric current or volt. It was
as if his batteries had been being completely recharged. His
Holiness remains a steadfast supporter. Since that initial
blessing, the Tibetan Buddhist leader has continued to
endorse the eye doctor’s work, and to offer his assistance in any way he can, particularly with his outreach camps and
his work in Tibet. ‘Dr Sanduk Ruit is a man from a humble
background who has made the most of opportunities offered
to him and dedicated his life to the well-being of others,’ the Fourteenth Dalai Lama says. ‘His life and work embody real
altruism in action . . . Dr Ruit is driven by the conviction that everyone with treatable blindness has a right to have their
eyesight restored, and that problems and solutions transcend
geographical boundaries.’ As for Ruit, he continues to regard Tenzin Gyatso’s blessing as a form of empowerment, vastly
increasing his capacity to help others through his work.
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Farewell to a friend
Business was almost non- existent for the few years of Ruit’s small private practice in New Road. Hardly anyone sought
him out. He didn’t even have his name on the door.
‘I used to call it “catching flies”, sitting there in the evening, doing nothing, just waiting for patients to turn up,’ he says.
But by the late 1980s, Ruit’s reputation had grown so
much that there was a long waiting list to see him. Patients
travelled long distances to go under his knife.
The French Buddhist monk and writer Matthieu Ricard,
who had been bringing monks to him for treatment, was so
impressed by Ruit’s surgical skills that he arranged for his
93- year- old mother to fly into Kathmandu. ‘Everyone said,
“Are you crazy? You want your mother to be operated on in
Nepal?” But I already regarded him as the greatest artist in the world when it comes to operating on cataracts, so I told my
mother I would definitely prefer [she have it done] in Kath-
mandu rather than in Paris,’ Ricard says. ‘When we got back
to France, her doctor said, “Wow, this is impeccable work!”’
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When Swiss- French public health expert Dr Nicole Grasset,
known as ‘Mother Teresa in a Dior dress’, needed cataract
surgery, she refused to see any other surgeon than Ruit. She
flew all the way to Kathmandu from Geneva for Ruit’s finesse.
But, just as Ruit’s career was about to take off, his world
came crashing down around him. In 1992, he learnt the devas-
tating news that Fred Hollows had terminal cancer. Ruit was at an eye camp at Nuwakot, a picturesque village about an hour
north of Kathmandu. Film maker Catherine Marciniak took
him to one side as the team sat around the fire one evening,
enjoying a drink. She pulled her chair up close. ‘Dr Ruit, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Fred has been diagnosed with cancer.’
Ruit sat there in stunned silence. Hollows had been having
treatment on his kidney when his surgeon discovered he
had cancer that would probably spread quickly to his lungs.
There was nothing really that could be done to control it.
Each word felt like a physical blow to Ruit’s chest.
His mind was reeling. Hollows was only 62. He had
smoked all his life. But why did he have to go now? They
had so many plans: building an intraocular lens factory, and
a new hospital, for a start. They had such a long way to go
together.
‘He and Gabi were my surrogate family. I felt I wouldn’t
be able to continue on with my work if Fred was not there.
I wasn’t sure how I could go on. My sister Yangla had died
far too young—that was devastating—but the news that Fred
was dying too now came as such a terrible shock. I was devas-
tated in an entirely new way.’
Ruit rang Gabi when he got back to Kathmandu, deeply
concerned about her.
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‘I knew she wasn’t working and the children were still so
little and needed her so much.’
Hollows had been Ruit’s mentor, teacher, champion and
brother.
Over the years Ruit had tried to emulate Hollows, by
learning to speak up about the things that mattered, having
more confidence in himself, and, most importantly, inspiring
confidence in others.
‘Fred had an incredible charisma, and a capacity to inspire
others with a desire to help carry out his dream,’ says Ruit.
‘He was very direct. He would say, “If you don’t do it this
way, I’ll kick your arse,” but he was usually right. He was
such a deep thinker on all sorts of issues, especially anything to do with public health.’
What Hollows taught Ruit was that it was possible to do something in public health that made a difference. He had
drummed into his protégé that countries in the developing
world like Nepal had to learn to do things themselves with
the money they received in overseas aid, rather than rely on
fly- in, fly- out foreign expertise. Hollows was always outraged that so much of Nepal’s foreign aid money went back to the
First World in the pockets of Western doctors. He scornfully
called these doctors ‘medical tourists’.
‘All they want to do is a bit of work at the hospital before
they go on their holiday trek in the mountains. What long-
term good does that do?’ Hollows would bark furiously.
Nepal had to learn to stand on its own two feet. What the
West should be doing instead, he said, was to ‘Give them a
fishing rod, teach them how to fish, and then piss off.’ What he meant by that was that he and Ruit needed to set up
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hospitals and train as many local doctors as they could, so
that they could continue his work—long after their biological lives had ended.
Ruit and Hollows saw each other twice before his death. The
first time they travelled to a surgical camp in south- west Nepal after Hollows’ kidney was removed. He had to be propped up
with pillows in the four- wheel drive during the long, bumpy
road up out of Kathmandu Valley. The last time they saw one
another was in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hollows had promised the
government of Vietnam he would teach intraocular lens surgery there, even if it meant taking an oxygen mask with him.
In June 1992, after a seven- hour operation, Hollows pulled
the tracheotomy tube from his neck, bandaged the wound,
and discharged himself from hospital. A week later he met
Ruit in Vietnam.
Using the most basic equipment, the pair held an eye surgery
workshop in Hanoi’s old communist hospital. Hollows was
too sick to operate, so Ruit did the bulk of the 107 procedures, and Hollows oversaw the 60- odd operations undertaken by
Vietnamese trainees. He
stood behind the doctors saying,
‘Do it this way’ or ‘Do it that way.’
He tired easily and used his oxygen mask a lot. ‘I was
really shocked when I saw him,’ Ruit says. ‘He’d lost so much weight and he was really struggling, he was trying to speak
through his tube, but he couldn’t speak properly. It was just so sad to watch someone who had been so robust needing all
these devices to stay alive.’
Within days, the pair had shown the trainees how to
perform the fast, affordable, delicate new technique Ruit had perfected.
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‘I think they felt more confident because I was someone
they could relate to,’ says Ruit. ‘They had a notion in their head that this is a surgery only a white person could teach.
It was unthinkable at the time, but, there I was, this misfit from Asia, doing the operations in seven minutes rather than
45 minutes as the French had been doing. And showing them
that they could do it too.’
The results the next day, when the first batch of patients had their bandages unwound, left the young Vietnamese surgeons
thunderstruck. ‘When they saw the first ten or so patients
seeing so well again, they could hardly believe it. From that moment on, the ball was in our court. They were in awe.’
That initial training program went on to revolutionise eye
care in the country, making Vietnam a world leader in the fight against avoidable blindness. In 1992, a mere 1000 modern
cataract operations were done; today, more than 200,000 are
performed each year.
One of the patients Hollows and Ruit operated on that
year was Tran van Giap, a nine- year- old who went blind in
his right eye after a piece of glass accidentally lodged in his cornea while he was playing with glass tubes.
Giap was the youngest and brightest of six children and
on the threshold of starting school. It was a cruel blow for
his whole family. His father, Tran Duc, made the expensive
trip to Hanoi, 170 kilometres away, seeking treatment for his son. They waited for about three weeks, only to be told there was nothing that could be done. They were just about to turn
around and go back home to their village when Hollows and
Ruit turned up.
Listening to music and humming a little as he operated,
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Ruit worked on the youngster the next day. Hollows and
Ruit changed his life. Instead of having to stay at home to
help his mother in the garden or his father in the rice field, Tran van Giap was able to go to school, study and enjoy
a career as a high school teacher. A photograph taken by
Michael Amendolia of Hollows examining Giap’s eyes in
Vietnam has turned Giap into something of a poster boy for
The Fred Hollows Foundation; he is living proof that restor-
ing sight changes lives. (The photograph, used during several promotional campaigns, has since raised millions of dollars
for the Foundation.)
Hollows was just skin and bone and using his oxygen
mask a lot when Ruit talked to him for the last time in Hanoi.
‘I said, “Fred, how are you feeling?” and he said, “Sanduk,
you know my days are numbered.”’
Hollows gave his friend a big bear hug and said, ‘I reckon
we’re going to have difficulty seeing each other again, mate.
They’re going to do some more treatment on my lungs, but
I don’t think I’m going to get any better. You just keep your work up. What you’re doing is great. Keep going.’
For a while, after Fred died in February 1993, Ruit was
plunged into a deep melancholy, as he had been after Yangla’s death. He was bereft without his friend. He found it hard to
accept that Hollows was gone for good, and that he somehow
had to carry on without him. He was dumbfounded that this
man who had lived so passionately, who had such a huge
vision, and who had achieved so much, was no longer in
his life.
He knew Gabi would support him, but also that she could
not do what Fred could. He rang Gabi, who told him to keep
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going, because that’s what Fred would have wanted him to
do. He talked to Nanda, and confessed to Rex Shore how
lacking in confidence he felt. Rex said the same thing as Gabi: just keep going, even if Fred’s not here. Do it for his sake. And that’s exactly what Ruit did.
Ruit had a great vision for what he wanted to do. He had
the surgical skills, but, for a long time, he needed Western
help—mainly equipment and funding—to achieve his vision.
Ruit firmly believes that without Fred and Gabi, he would
not have gone on to carry out his lofty goal. Part of Fred
Hollows’ spirit has stayed with him, propelling him onwards,
Ruit says. His friend is still watching over him.
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14
The best of my love
After their operations, Ruit’s patients enter a thrilling new world in which everything is bright and well- defined. Faces, trees, food—everything about them looks fresh. Sometimes
seeing the world again can come as a shock, too. Some patients are saddened by how old their relatives look, or how humble
their homes are. One Laotian single mother was horrified
when she returned home after sight- restoring surgery to see
the dilapidated hut she had been sharing with her children.
She’d been unaware that their home was little more than a
bamboo shack that was in danger of being swept into the
river whenever it rained.
But usually new vision is a cause of relief, and great jubilation. One of the most dramatic physical transformations Ruit
ever witnessed was that of a homeless old woman brought
into their annual clinic held at Kalimpong, northern India.
The woman looked like she’d just been dragged out of the
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gnarled, rickety legs and worn feet were almost blackened
with dirt and she smelled as if she hadn’t washed for about a year. ‘The people who brought her in told us she would sit in the corner of a lane and wouldn’t eat for days,’ Ruit says. ‘She slept in the corner on a sack and was half demented. Sometimes she would hit the wall and shout. She had no family or
friends to speak of.’
Ruit usually only does one cataract at a time, with several
weeks in between. But this woman was so unbalanced he
doubted she would come back for the second one, so he did
both the same day. The nurses showed her the tap and gave
her a towel and some soap, so she could wash her face and
hands, then gave her something to eat and drink. The day
after her operation, they gave her some new clothes: a sari,
a pair of sandals, and a white cardigan. She couldn’t st
op
crying when she saw them laid out neatly in front of her. Were they really for her?
She asked for a few rupees to buy a small plastic comb.
Someone brought her a mirror, and the first thing she did was arrange her hair into a bun. She had been miserable for so
long that she’d forgotten how to smile. She had to practise
pulling the muscles on either side of her face upwards in front of the mirror. Soon after, she took up a loan to set up a small grocery store.
When Ruit returned to the same eye camp a year later, he
noticed a new grocery shop that had been set up nearby and
sent a boy over to buy sweets for the youngest patients.
The owner wore a soft pink sari, pretty earrings, and her
dark hair was swept elegantly off her face. Someone asked
Ruit if he remembered her.
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He was perplexed. Had she been a school teacher to one
of his children? A nurse at his hospital? Eventually, the boy said, ‘Don’t you remember? You operated on her last year
at the eye camp.’ They used to call her ‘The mad woman of
Kalimpong’.
‘I couldn’t get over the change in her, she was like a new
woman. Work doesn’t get much more satisfying than that,
does it, when you can do that for a person,’ Ruit says.
At another of Ruit’s camps, a seventeen- year- old boy was
brought in by his mother. He was so hunched over, so curled
up in himself that Ruit’s team thought he was either physically or mentally disabled. His mother said he had been so bright,
and wanted to be a teacher or a doctor, but that he’d had to
leave school because he couldn’t see the blackboard. The boy
had railed against his fate, kicking the walls inside their stone hut. His mother despaired of him. Rather than being able to
watch him grow into a young man who could go to school and
make his way in the world, he had become just another mouth
to feed. Ruit operated on both his eyes for cataracts.
When his eye patches were unwound, the boy had uncurled
from his foetal position and stood up straight. He came out
of his shell, he started talking and exploring his surround-
ings, he scrambled to the top of a pile of rocks to take in the view. His mother just couldn’t stop smiling. At last, her son had a chance of going to school and making something of his