A Nepali ophthalmologist bags prestigious Magsaysay award
Dr. Sanduk Ruit, director of the Tilganga Eye Centre based in Kathmandu, has been awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award for Peace and International Understanding for the year 2006, an official announcement by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said on Monday.
Dr. Ruit is the third Nepali to bag the prestigious Magsaysay award.
Dr. Ruit is one of the six Asians chosen for this year’s Magsaysay award, widely recognized as Asia’s highest honor and referred to as Nobel Prize of Asia.
Dr. Ruit is being honored for “placing Nepal at the forefront of developing safe, effective and economical procedures for cataract surgery, enabling the needlessly blind in even the poorest countries to see again,” a statement issued by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) said.
Other awardees selected this year include Ek Sonn Chan from Cambodia for Government Service, Park Won Soon from Korea for Public Service, Eugenia Duran Apostol from the Philippines in the Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, Arvind Kejriwal, from India for Emergent Leadership and Antonio Meloto from the Philippines in the Community Leadership category.
The award was established in 1957 in memory of the third president of the Phillipines, Ramon Magsaysay.
Dr. Ruit has operated on cataract patients and helped them restore their eye sight by organising mobile eye care services to poor and needy people in Nepal, China, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and North Korea, among others.
In 1977, economic historian Dr. Mahesh Chandra Regmi became the first Nepali to bag the award in Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts category. Twenty-five years later, veteran journalist Bharat Dutta Koirala was awarded the coveted award under the same category.
“In a world grown increasingly complex, divided, and cynical, these remarkable Asians persist in addressing longstanding, painful social issues,” said C T Abella, president of the RMAF, in a statement issued on Monday. nepalnews.com by July 31 06
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