Blindness & Poverty

Reflecting on 2022

I find myself looking back on the successes of the year as we near the end of the year.

My past year has been dominated by Tej Kohli and Ruit Foundation. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation has been fighting cataract blindness throughout the developing world since March 2021.

Since setting our sights on poverty reduction and blindness cure, Dr Ruit and I have steadily expanded our Foundation's reach to more and more remote areas. Those in marginalised areas do not have access to or cannot afford quality healthcare systems, so they continue to suffer needlessly throughout their lives.

Providing support for those in need and educating others about global situations are our responsibilities. As I reflect on this past year, I realize there are increasingly fewer people who understand the plight of those overseas.

Many people, including us, wish to permanently change the fact that blindness is extremely prevalent in the developing world. The lack of awareness plays a major role in this problem.

This year, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation visited several more areas across Nepal, Ghana and Bhutan.

Below you can find stories and photos of the places we took our mission and cured thousands more of needless blindness.

Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation in Kalikot, Nepal

Three Children in Jajakot, Nepal who were all cured of blindness

One of the highlights of 2022 was curing three young children in Jajakot, Nepal. The three children each were suffering from childhood cataracts and needed to be cured before it affected their vision for life. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation screened and cured each child which has supported the family to begin their move out of extreme poverty. Watch their story below:

You can also listen to their story on the To See or Not To See Podcast.

Another major part of 2022 was moving the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation mission into Bhutan. Bhutan is located on the east of the Himalayas. Bhutan has a relativley small population with just over 800,000 people. Approximately 1.0% of Bhutanese are blind in both eyes and 14.2% of the population of Bhutan lives with some form of visual disability. There are also around 10,460 people in Bhutan who are awaiting cataract surgery.

Moving our mission into Bhutan is part of a collaboration between the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation, the Bhutanese government and the Bhutanese Royal Family. We have pledged to cure 5000 people of cataract blindness over the next five years with the goal of Bhutan government matching the number - ultimately curing 10,000 people of cataract blindness, ridding cataracts in the country.

Read a story about one patient, Singye who was cured of blindness in our August visit to Wangdue Phodrang, Bhutan.

October 13th 2022 also marked a big day for the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation. We activlly joined the World Sight Day event this year and pledged all of our surgeries to the IAPB as part of the global event.

For World Sight Day, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation worked with many other organisations such as the Internation Centre for Eye Health, Orbis, Anglia Ruskin University, the Vision Catalyst Fund and many more. We encouraged others to join us to raise awareness through the London based publication CityAM.

It was here we published a variety of stories and articles related to all things eye health and what we can do to put an end to needless blindness across the world.

You can read our CityAM stories here

Overall, 2022 has been a large success for the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation. With aboslutly no plans to slow down, we are looking forward to taking our mission and intervention in many more countires in 2023 and putting a stop to needless cataract blindness.

Make sure you keep up to date with everything the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation get up to throughout 2023 by following our socials!

For more information on Tej Kohli as a philanthropist visit tejkohliruit.com and to read more of his views go to his Medium.

To read about Tej Kohli as an investor and technologist visit Kohli Ventures.

Find out more about Tej Kohli: Tej Kohli the technologist investing in human triumph, Tej Kohli the philanthropist trying to cure the developing world of cataracts and Tej Kohli the London tycoon with a generous streak.