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Second Suns

Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives
Jul 11, 2013savtadina rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I was fascinated and humbled to read the story of Drs. Sanduk Ruit and Geoffrey Tabin and how they have directly and indirectly already been involved in saving the eyesight of over 2,000,000 people in third world countries. I was especially impressed by Dr. Ruit, who was born in a tiny village high in the Himalayas and was sent to India for schooling. I had never heard of their efforts before I heard of this book, and I think that their efforts should become more widely known so that they can multiply their efforts. The book is somewhat choppily written...a lot of the book is devoted to Tabin, his path to becoming a doctor and his involvement with Ruit, than about Ruit and the development by Ruit of a super-fast way of removing cataracts (well under 10 minutes for the whole operation) and the expansion of the program. I would have liked to know more about both of those, but I think that it was probably harder to get Ruit to take time to talk to the author. I strongly recommend that others read this book to hear of the amazing efforts of the NGO the Himalayan Cataract Project. It has expanded to other countries, including Ethiopia, and surgeons have also gone to other parts of Africa, China, and North Korea, all places where with a simple surgery to remove cataracts (in children as well as adults) blindness can be eliminated in many cases. I was saddened to learn about the death of the author.