Tej Kohli is screening 1,000,000 people in his fight against poverty blindness
- 3 years ago
Tej Kohli is a London tycoon who has committed to spending a portion on his wealth on tackling poverty blindness. Blindness is a major global health challenge and is a significant barrier to individual, social and economic improvement within the world's poorest communities.
Tej Kohli has adopted ending blindness due to poverty as his primary calling and mission, and since 2005 has funded grassroots programmes to cure tens of thousands of people of blindness within poor and underserved communities, most notably in India where the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute cured 43,255 people of corneal blindness between 2015 and 2019.
To respond to the evolving crisis of needless blindness in poor communities, in early 2021 Tej Kohli partnered with 'God of Sight' Dr Sanduk Ruit to launch the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation, a charity registered in the UK and also in Nepal. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation plans to screen 1,000,000 people and to cure at least 300,000 of blindness by 2026.
Under the leadership of Dr Sanduk Ruit and with open ended funding from Tej Kohli, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation has been staging microsurgical outreach camps that take treatment for cataract blindness out into remote communities. Starting initially in Nepal, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation is now extending these outreach camps into many countries all around the world, where the charity will be curing blind populations, training doctors and clinicians to help prevent blindness in the future, and measuring the social impact.
Tej Kohli first encountered the problem of needless blindness after being invited to fund corneal transplants in India nearly two decades ago. Upon seeing a patient be able to see his family for the first time after having his blindness cured in a single operation, Tej Kohli decided that he would use his wealth and expertise to make a tangible long term impact by curing needless blindness.
A huge proportion of needless blindness arises due to poverty and is entirely avoidable or curable. That millions of people in the world remain cataract blind despite cures being available and relatively inexpensive is a major global health failure. The failure in global health policy has a pervasive social and economic impact in the developing countries where 90% of the world's blind people live.
The Tej Kohli ambition as long been to set an example for how to prevent and cure blindness at the grassroots level within the world's underserved communities. The Tej Kohli And Ruit Foundation partnership with Dr Sanduk Ruit means that this ambition is increasingly being realised in countries throughout the world.
Tej Kohli shares his thoughts and wisdom in his #TejTalks blog and social media posts. On Medium.com and on the World Economic Forum, Tej Kohli regularly blogs about blindness, inequality, poverty and global health.. All #TejTalks blogs and posts can be accessed from http://www.tejkohli.co.uk
Tej Kohli has adopted ending blindness due to poverty as his primary calling and mission, and since 2005 has funded grassroots programmes to cure tens of thousands of people of blindness within poor and underserved communities, most notably in India where the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute cured 43,255 people of corneal blindness between 2015 and 2019.
To respond to the evolving crisis of needless blindness in poor communities, in early 2021 Tej Kohli partnered with 'God of Sight' Dr Sanduk Ruit to launch the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation, a charity registered in the UK and also in Nepal. The Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation plans to screen 1,000,000 people and to cure at least 300,000 of blindness by 2026.
Under the leadership of Dr Sanduk Ruit and with open ended funding from Tej Kohli, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation has been staging microsurgical outreach camps that take treatment for cataract blindness out into remote communities. Starting initially in Nepal, the Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation is now extending these outreach camps into many countries all around the world, where the charity will be curing blind populations, training doctors and clinicians to help prevent blindness in the future, and measuring the social impact.
Tej Kohli first encountered the problem of needless blindness after being invited to fund corneal transplants in India nearly two decades ago. Upon seeing a patient be able to see his family for the first time after having his blindness cured in a single operation, Tej Kohli decided that he would use his wealth and expertise to make a tangible long term impact by curing needless blindness.
A huge proportion of needless blindness arises due to poverty and is entirely avoidable or curable. That millions of people in the world remain cataract blind despite cures being available and relatively inexpensive is a major global health failure. The failure in global health policy has a pervasive social and economic impact in the developing countries where 90% of the world's blind people live.
The Tej Kohli ambition as long been to set an example for how to prevent and cure blindness at the grassroots level within the world's underserved communities. The Tej Kohli And Ruit Foundation partnership with Dr Sanduk Ruit means that this ambition is increasingly being realised in countries throughout the world.
Tej Kohli shares his thoughts and wisdom in his #TejTalks blog and social media posts. On Medium.com and on the World Economic Forum, Tej Kohli regularly blogs about blindness, inequality, poverty and global health.. All #TejTalks blogs and posts can be accessed from http://www.tejkohli.co.uk