Club members gave this book a rating of 8 out of 10 or higher, with most giving it 9.5.

We found Dr Sanduk Ruit himself inspirational. And we were fully engaged with his life’s story, from childhood in a poor village in the Himalayas to his achievement in almost halving the high incidence of blindness amongst the poor in Nepal.

The full title of the book is The Barefoot Surgeon: The Inspirational Story of Dr Sanduk Ruit, the Eye Surgeon Giving Sight and Hope to the World’s Poor. Some of us were dubious that such a book which promises so much could deliver, especially those of us who revere Fred Hollows in this way and had never heard of Dr Ruit. However, it turns out that Sanduk and Fred were close friends after meeting in Nepal.

It was Fred who inspired Sanduk and helped him get started, while it was Sanduk who, after Fred’s untimely death, plugged away to achieve both their goals of bringing cheap and efficient cataract surgery to the poor in Nepal.

We found the story wonderful but were not as impressed with the author’s writing style which we found rather simplistic. At times the author repeats herself but we tolerated that because what she said was often worth repeating. However, the story did not flag and kept our interest throughout, which was as much to do with the details of Sanduk’s life as with the author’s ability to tell it.

Born in 1954, Sanduk Ruit came from a poor family who lived in the freezing village of Olanchungola (aka Walung), in the Himalayan foothills of north eastern Nepal. He was a Walunga, the name of a tribe that had migrated from Tibet generations before. The nearest town was four days’ walk away, due south.

Access to medical help was nil and Sanduk’s eldest brother died before Sanduk was born while his younger sister, Chundak, 8, and his beloved sister Yangla, 15, also died during his childhood. The family were devout Buddhists and prayed to the Dalai Lama and the Guru Rinpoche as their only resource. Sanduk was originally destined to become a Buddhist monk and spent several years in monastic life. He has remained unshaken in his devotion to these teachings throughout his life.

Sanduk was born into the lowest tier of a rigid class system with nothing to his name. His father Sonam was a salt trader who travelled to and from Tibet, Nepal and Calcutta through the Himalayas, away for months at a time. Because of the death of his elder brother, Sanduk knew he would have to join his father as a salt trader when he grew up.

There was no school in his village. However, fortunately his parents and relatives recognised Sanduk’s intelligence. The book relates the incredible journey that he and his father took, walking for two weeks over many miles of steep narrow mountain paths through Himalayan passes and peaks to a Catholic boarding school in Darjeeling. Boarding and tuition at this school was equivalent to six months of his father’s income each year. Sanduk was 7 when he left home.

Sanduk later moved to Kathmandu for high school. His sister, Yangla, was also bright. She moved in with Sanduk, studying at a girls’ school not far from his, with ambitions to become a teacher. They treasured their time together. However, Yangla contracted tuberculosis and the drugs she needed were too expensive for the family to afford. As she was dying she told her brother he had to do something to help people like her. Sanduk was infuriated that he had lost half his family to diseases readily cured in the west and became determined to become a doctor.

He studied for a Colombo Plan scholarship to enter King George’s Medical University in Lucknow, northern India, more than 1000 kilometres from his family and in a dramatically different climate - as searingly hot as his childhood had been freezingly cold.

During his medical degree, he discovered his gifts for surgery, being both fast and meticulously accurate. He became a junior medical officer at Bir Hospital in Kathmandu. While he was on the lowest rung it was still a prestigious position for a boy from a remote mountain village. He was asked to join the ophthalmology department and went with other doctors on an outreach surgical camp, travelling several hundred kilometres away and setting up a makeshift field hospital. It was there that Sanduk first began eye surgery under the gaze of a senior surgeon.

Sanduk met Prof Fred Hollows in Nepal in 1985, while Fred was on a six week sabbatical, researching the prevalence of trachoma in Nepal for the World Health Organisation. By that stage, Fred had spent two years administering to aboriginal people in the outback and drawing attention to their shameful lack of health care. He eventually received an Order of Australia for his work.

As a junior doctor, Sanduk was struck by the fact that Fred was completely informal with him, and arrived in Nepal long-haired with an untucked shirt and a pipe hanging out of his mouth. The pair hit it off straight away and Fred joined Sanduk on the outreach camps. They both were driven by the idea that high-quality eye care was the birthright of everyone.

Watching a blind person with cataracts see again after surgery was deeply moving for Sanduk and set his path for the future. He obtained a World Health Organisation scholarship for an ophthalmic postgraduate degree at the All India Institute of Medical Science in New Delhi, India where he learnt the skills of microsurgery, working under the lens of a microscope.

While he was there, he learned about the advances in cataract surgery in the West where cataracts had become something that were easily fixed in just a few days because of intraocular lenses, doing away with the need for thick Coke-bottle glasses. He also learned about how to build trust and faith from his patients through kindness and a clear explanation of what was going to happen to them. He graduated second in ophthalmology in the whole university.

While working at the Nepal Eye Hospital in Kathmandu, he met his future wife, Nanda, a nurse who assisted in his operating theatre. Nanda was a Newari woman, from a prestigious Hindu caste who were the original settlers in Kathmandu. Under the strict rules of Nepal’s caste system it was unthinkable for them to marry.

Eventually, however, love conquered all and they eloped to the Netherlands. It was only after they had produced a son that difficulties with their respective families over their relationship could be overcome.

While in Holland they both worked with Dutch eye doctors, Jan Worst and Cornelius D Binkhorst who were making revolutionary strides in cataract surgery.

Sanduk and Nanda next travelled to Sydney for a year with the help of Fred Hollows paying for their airfares and inviting them to stay at his and his wife, Gabi’s, house. Fred inspired Sanduk to return to Kathmandu to help his people. The Nepal Eye Program Australia (NEPA) charity was born and successfully raised money for the cause. Fred donated intraocular lenses for Sanduk to take back to Nepal with him for cataract patients.

On returning to Kathmandu, Sanduk’s father gave the couple tacit consent to their marriage by allowing them to live in a small flat he owned under his own apartment and not far from the Nepal Eye Hospital. However, in every other way both families shunned them, which Sanduk credited for strengthening his marriage as the pair had nobody else to depend on but each other.

The rift was only finally healed with the arrival of their first child, Sagar, a son, in 1989, when they married again with the whole family as witnesses. Eventually, Sagar was joined by Serbia and Satenla, two daughters. However, the family continued to live in the tiny apartment for 20 years so that Sanduk could save money for the outreach camps.

By 1988 when Sanduk returned to the Nepal Eye Hospital, he had refined intraocular cataract surgery to the point where the wound was so tiny no stitches were needed at all and his patients’ eyes healed of their own accord. This was both far less expensive and much safer than the older style surgery still conventionally practiced. Patients could get up and walk home with perfect vision a few days after surgery.

But no other surgeons or administrators were interested in clinical trials at the hospital or in taking part in Sanduk’s outreach camps. Eventually the establishment became outraged by what Sanduk was doing. Nevertheless, Sanduk left the Nepal Eye Hospital, taking seven staff with him to run his microsurgical camps.

To supplement his income he also worked at his own practice which became the unofficial headquarters for his campaign with the assistance of the Nepal Eye Program (NEP) charity.

Sanduk and his team were true outlaws since they were performing advanced surgery without any form of regulation or clinical trial. But by 1990 positive publicity for what he was achieving for the blind people of Nepal with minimal resources and under the most primitive conditions started to grow and surgeons in the West began to visit and to champion his work, legitimising what he was doing.

Eventually, western journalists and photographers, celebrities, royalty, and the Dalai Lama took up his cause and enabled him to spread his clinics further afield and begin training other surgeons by building an earthquake-proof hospital in Kathmandu. The Tilganga Eye Centre, as it was called, was downstream from the holy Pashupatinath temple where smoke and ash rise daily from the Hindu funeral pyres. Eventually, Sanduk was able to persuade people to donate corneas from their dead relatives before their cremations.

There are a number of interesting people in this book, apart from Sanduk and Nanda and Fred and Gabi and their families. One is Rex Shore who resigned from his job in Sydney to dedicate himself to helping Sanduk achieve his dream by becoming his executive assistant and jack of all trades. Another is Les Douglas, Australian ambassador to Nepal who was instrumental in building the eye hospital. The book reveals how he travelled with Sanduk to farflung Mustang in the Himalayas and the medieval city of Lo Mantang before almost losing his life on the return journey. The patients’ stories and how Sanduk’s work ended their isolation from their families and neighbours are also fascinating.

For those of you who haven’t read the book you may think this summary will suffice, but there is much, much more to it! Do yourself a favour and read it. You will also find out why Sanduk was called the barefoot surgeon and why his mother, Kasang, called him Dragon of the Sky.

Who is Ali Gripper?

Australian journalist, Ali Gripper, has written features for newspapers and magazines for more than two decades including Good Weekend, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the Daily Telegraph, the South China Morning Post and Country Style Magazine. She worked closely with Sanduk Ruit for three years to write his life story.