The Himalayan Cataract Project is a nonprofit started by\u00a0two ophthalmologists\u00a0Dr Geoffrey Tabin and Dr Sanduk Ruit with the aim of providing cheap and sustainable eye care to people living in the Himalayan region. The duo believe suffering from blindness is particularly tough for people living in rugged terrains, so they work towards\u00a0restoring their eye sight with a simple, minutes-long surgery.<\/p>\n
When the two ophthalmologists first visited Nepal three decades ago, the cheapest cataract lens that was available cost over $250; but once the team started manufacturing the lenses locally, they brought the price tag down to under $25 per lens.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlindness is one of the neglected problems of global health but it\u2019s also one of the few big problems that we can win,\u201d says Dr Tabin. “From the first time I saw the miracle of cataract surgery on a totally blind patient, I realized that there is nothing else I can think of in the realm of medicine that is as cost-effective that we can do [to] really change lives instantaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project now operates out of\u00a0Ghana, Bhutan, India, Ethiopia, Myanmar and several others. On an average day, their clinics perform up to 200 cataract surgeries, each of which takes roughly 4 to 20 minutes to complete. After wearing gauze bandages over their eyes for 24 hours, most of their patients are capable of passing a driver\u2019s license vision test the very next day.<\/p>\n