Out of the Darkness
World premiere in New Zealand
An award winning documentary featuring Fred Hollows' great friend and dedicated humanitarian, Dr Sanduk Ruit of Nepal, had its world premiere at the Documentary Edge Film festival in Auckland this month.
The inspiring documentary shows Dr Ruit and his team on a mission to bring the needlessly blind of rural Nepal out of the darkness, with a trek to a remote village carrying an entire hospital on porters’ backs.
Director Stefano Levi follows the men as they humbly go about bringing hope and light to those who don’t have any in the most difficult of conditions.
The documentary will screen in Wellington on 10th, 19th and 25th March. Please join us on 19th March, at 12.15 pm, for refreshments before the screening.
To book tickets, click here (Please attend the 19th March screening if you can)
Out of the Darkness has been selected to be screened at the ECU - European Independent Film Festival. Among the 78 independent Films selected from all over Europe, one of only six documentaries chosen.
A friendship and a partnership - Professor Fred Hollows and Dr Sandruk Ruit
In 1980 a national Prevention of Blindness Program was established in Nepal after a survey found that more than 400,000 people were suffering from blindness throughout the country and that 80% of cases were treatable.
Dr Sanduk Ruit was playing a significant role in Nepal in the treatment of avoidable blindness but there was a frustration at the lack of equipment and training available, as it was hindering the efforts being made to facilitate cataract operations.
Fred Hollows and Dr Ruit met in the mid-1980s and Dr Ruit later came to Australia for a year to train and live with Fred. Ruit was both Fred’s protégé and friend. Both men were driven to overcome the obstacles of providing high quality eye care to people in Nepal.
In 1988, the Nepal Eye Program Australia (NEPA) was established by Dr Ruit, Fred and Gabi Hollows, Tim Macartney-Snape and other friends and colleagues - with the aim of supporting Nepal’s Prevention of Blindness Program.
A major obstacle in Nepal was the high cost of supplies needed for cataract operations. As a solution, plans were made to build a laboratory in Kathmandu that would produce intraocular lenses for use in modern cataract surgery.
When The Fred Hollows Foundation was established in 1992, NEPA came under The Foundation’s umbrella and a program began to establish a Fred Hollows Intraocular Lens Laboratory in Kathmandu. A similar laboratory was constructed at the same time in Asmara, Eritrea by The Foundation.
NEPA, which had become an active support group for Nepal, also began raising funds for the establishment of a Surgicentre in Kathmandu. NEPA was eventually able to equip the Surgicentre with modern operating equipment and also provide both staff and surgical consumables for its first two years of operation. Additional funding for both the IOL laboratory and the Surgicentre came from other local and international sources.
Led by Dr Ruit as the Medical Director, Tilganga Eye Centre was opened in 1994, just one year after Fred Hollows died.
At the Centre’s opening ceremony, which was officially attended by His Majesty, the late King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev and 400 guests, Gabi Hollows was witness to her late husband’s dream finally being fulfilled.
As a leading Centre of Excellence, Tilganga is today internationally renowned for its results in treating avoidable blindness throughout Nepal and in other developing countries.
