HETAUDA, Nepal — WATCHING the doctor perform is like observing miracles. He has restored eyesight to more than 100,000 people, perhaps more than any doctor in history, and still his patients come. They stagger and grope their way to him along mountain trails from remote villages, hoping to go under his scalpel and see loved ones again. A day after he operates to remove cataracts, he pulls off the bandages — and, lo! They can see clearly. At first tentatively, then jubilantly, they gaze about.
A few hours later, they walk home, radiating an ineffable bliss. Dr. Sanduk Ruit, a Nepali ophthalmologist, may be the world champion in the war on blindness. Some 39 million people worldwide are blind — about half because of cataracts — and another 246 million have impaired vision, according to the World Health Organization. If you’re a blind person in a poor country, then traditionally you have no hope. But Dr. Ruit has pioneered a simple cataract microsurgery technique that costs only $25 per patient and is virtually always successful.
This is a real photo that was captured in Damascus, Syria in the year 1889. The one being carried is a Christian dwarf named Sameer. The one carrying him is a blind Muslim named Mohammed. Sameer would depend on Mohammed for transportation in the busy streets of Damascus. Mohammed also depended on Sameer to help navigate him passed obstacles. Only one of them was able to walk and only one of them was able to see. They were both orphans and lived together in the same room. They were forever together. Then Sameer died, Mohammed stayed in his room crying for a week. He lost his other half and as a result he died after that week from sadness. This once used to be Syria.