Eyeworld Daily News

34 | EYEWORLD DAILY NEWS | JULY 24, 2021 ASCRS ANNUAL MEETING DAILY NEWS T he ASCRS Foundation announced that Geoff Tabin, MD, and Sanduk Ruit, MD, are the 2021 Chang-Crandall Humanitarian Award winners. Endowed by a generous gift from David and Victoria Chang, and presented each year at the ASCRS Annual Meeting, the ASCRS Foundation Chang-Cran- dall Humanitarian Award was es- tablished to honor and recognize outstanding humanitarian work with a focus on cataract blindness and disability. In 2020, the ASCRS Foundation renamed its highest honor the Chang-Crandall Hu- manitarian Award in posthumous recognition of the exemplary life and commitment to charitable service of Alan Crandall, MD. A $50,000 prize is awarded to a charitable ophthalmology orga- nization of the winner's choosing. Out of more than 85 nominations submitted, Drs. Tabin and Ruit received the highest vote totals from the nominating committee, and the ASCRS Foundation Board chose to name them co-winners. David and Victoria Chang doubled the award to $100,000 for this year. Drs. Tabin and Ruit embody the spirit of the award through their 25-year dedication to hu- manitarian work in some of the most impoverished areas of the Himalayas and Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Tabin is the co-founder and chairman of the Himalayan Cataract Project and a professor of ophthalmology and global medi- cine at Stanford University. Dr. Tabin is the fourth person in the world to reach the tallest peak on each of the seven con- tinents. After summiting Mount Everest, he came across a Dutch team performing cataract sur- gery on a woman who had been needlessly blind for 3 years. It was then he understood his life's calling. Dr. Tabin graduated from Yale University and earned an MA in philosophy at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship. He then earned his MD from Harvard Medical School. After completing an ophthalmology residency at Brown University and a fellowship in corneal surgery in Melbourne, Australia, Dr. Tabin returned to Nepal to work with Dr. Ruit. Dr. Ruit's mission has been to provide world-class eyecare to pa- tients, regardless of ability to pay. He regularly performs dozens of small incision surgeries on mature cataracts in eye camps over the course of a 12-hour day. Dr. Ruit was born in a remote village in Eastern Nepal. His sister died of tuberculosis when he was 17, an experience that led him to become a doctor. After completing a 3-year ophthalmology residency at the All India Institute of Med- ical Sciences in Delhi, India, Dr. Ruit returned to Nepal. It was while working on a Ne- pal Blindness Survey that Dr. Ruit choose his life's path: to restore sight to those unnecessarily blind. He was the first Nepali doctor to implant IOLs, and he pioneered a manual, small incision meth- od for delivering high-volume, cost-effective cataract surgeries in remote eye camps to which his team must often trek on foot. In 1994, he founded the Tilganga Eye Center in Kathmandu, which treats 6,000 patients a week and provides much of the country's subspecialty eyecare. Drs. Tabin and Ruit estab- lished the Himalayan Cataract Project in 1995, vowing to elim- inate preventable and treatable blindness from the Himalayan region in their lifetime, a goal, in Dr. Tabin's words, "more auda- cious than setting out to make the first ascent of the East Face of Mount Everest." Their programs train and support ophthalmolo- gists throughout Southeast Asia and Africa. "It gives us great joy to re- ceive this incredible honor that is associated with two of our heroes, David Chang and the late Alan Crandall—legends of global medicine and among the most dedicated and kindest ophthal- mologists we know. We stand on the shoulders of so many giants who've taught and inspired us and are excited to continue working with the ASCRS Foundation and its members to overcome the trav- esty of needless blindness in our world," Drs. Tabin and Ruit said. Drs. Tabin and Ruit have earmarked the financial prize to the Himalayan Cataract Project/ CureBlindness.org for their work in overcoming needless blindness in Nepal. Geoff Tabin, MD, and Sanduk Ruit, MD, selected for 2021 ASCRS Foundation Chang-Crandall Humanitarian Award

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