A Second Chance To Life By Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation

This is the story of Chyo Maya Praja, a 55 years old lady from the Chepang community of Nepal. She lived high up on the hills of Makwanpur. Chyo Maya had a daughter; both worked as daily wage labourers and managed to survive until she started going blind. Since she stayed in an area that was not well-connected to the healthcare centres or any hospital, she gradually lost her eyesight completely. The result was that Chyo Maya could no longer work as a daily labour and failed even to do her own work.

The guilt of being a burden on her daughter, who also had to lose out on daily work because of the need to take care of her mother, led Chyo Maya to take the drastic step of committing suicide. She wanted to free her daughter of the responsibilities and stop being a burden on her.

Fate had other plans for her; while Chyo Maya decided to drown herself in a river, villagers saw her and rescued her. One of her neighbours heard about the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation eye screening camp in Hetauda, Nepal. The gracious neighbour took Chyo Maya to the camp and was screened. The prognosis was Chyo Maya was suffering from cataracts, a needless blindness which can be cured easily.

Dr SandukRuit, with other ophthalmologists, surgeons and volunteers, performed cataract removal surgery on 369 people. Chyo Maya was one of them; the result was obvious: she was about to have her happy ending. Chyo Maya got her eyesight back.

The story of Chyo Maya is not unique because millions worldwide suffer from this needless blindness or cataract. According to Mr Tej Kohli and Dr SandukRuit, this can be changed by taking eyecare, screening and easy-to-perform cataract removal surgeries to the underserved communities of developing nations. Philanthropist Tej Kohli and world-renowned eye surgeon Dr Sanduk Ruit are on a mission to create change in the world by screening at least 1,000,000 people and curing 500,000 cataracts and congenital blindness by 2030.

Tej Kohli has been working relentlessly to provide much-needed technology and scientific breakthrough in eye surgery and congenital eye diseases. He invests in research, and the result has been impressive, where the time and cost of cataract surgery have been significantly reduced. As a result, this drive to create a society that does not spiral into poverty due to blindness is quite achievable. 2030 in Sight, Ending Avoidable Sight Loss now seems doable with the help of Mr Tej Kohli and Dr SandukRuit, where people like Chyo Maya get a second chance to live their life better.