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Second Suns

Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
From the co-author of Three Cups of Tea comes the inspiring story of two very different doctors—one from the United States, the other from Nepal—united in a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness.

In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world's most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional. Ruit grew up in a remote Nepalese village, where he became intimately acquainted with the human costs of inadequate access to health care. Together they found their life's calling: tending to the afflicted people of the Himalayas, a vast mountainous region with an alarmingly high incidence of cataract blindness.

Second Suns takes us from improvised plywood operating tables in villages without electricity or plumbing to state-of-the-art surgical centers at major American universities where these two driven men are restoring sight—and hope—to patients from around the world. With their revolutionary, inexpensive style of surgery, Tabin and Ruit have been able to cure tens of thousands—all for about twenty dollars per operation. David Oliver Relin brings the doctors' work to vivid life through poignant portraits of patients helped by the surgery, from old men who cannot walk treacherous mountain trails unaided to cataract-stricken children who have not seen their mothers' faces for years. With the dexterity of a master storyteller, Relin shows the profound emotional and practical impact that these operations have had on patients' lives.

Second Suns is the moving, unforgettable story of how two men with a shared dream are changing the world, one pair of eyes at a time.
Praise for Second Suns

"As miracles go, it's hard to beat making the blind see. Yet that's exactly what the eye surgeon Dr. Geoffrey Tabin can do. He services poor people in the developing world who have developed cataracts—a clouding of the lens of the eye that is the world's leading cause of blindness. . . . Second Suns is a hopeful work, a profile of two doctors who have dedicated their lives to bringing light to those in darkness."Time

"A compelling and inspiring book . . . Second Suns portrays heroic health care delivered under harrowing conditions: Ruit and his teams carry their equipment on multi-day treks up steep mountain trails, sometimes hiking at night with flashlights or head lamps, to reach settlements where they typically spend several days operating on hundreds of villagers in makeshift surgical theaters."The Washington Post

"Second Suns should be required reading for anybody with an interest in humanitarian philanthropy—or, for that matter, a desire to feel a little better about the world."Outside

"A detailed, heartfelt account of the work of [two] dedicated pioneers."Kirkus Reviews
From the Hardcover edition.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 24, 2013
      Two ophthalmologistsâGeoffrey Tabin in the US and his Nepal-based mentor, Sanduk Ruitâform the heart of this book, as Relin explores both men's decision to eradicate curable blindness with a particular focus in helping the people of the Himalayas. The book's contents will likely be overshadowed by the author's November 2011 suicide, as well as the controversies surrounding the accuracy of his previous co-authored best-seller, Three Cups of Tea. That's a shame, since Relin left behind a well-crafted, moving, and thought-provoking meditation on two men determined to implement the "single most effective medical intervention on earth" for as many of the world's poor as they could. Relin's portraits of the manic Tabin and the more resolute Ruit are captivating, and their odd-couple friendship is particularly interesting to read, creating a far more vivid portrait than the typical "living saint" approach. This book will leave readers not just in awe of the work Ruit and Tabin do, but also of the possibilities for earth-changing work available to any who are sufficiently determined.

    • Kirkus

      June 1, 2013
      The tortuous route of two intrepid eye doctors, one Nepalese, one American, in their journey to eradicate preventable blindness in the Himalayas. Journalist and co-author of another inspiring story of humanitarian accomplishment, the best-seller Three Cups of Tea, Relin, who died last year, pursued the two founders of the Himalayan Cataract Project, over several years as they established their partnership and shared mission. Sanduk Ruit, a Nepalese-born ophthalmologist, was profoundly unsettled by the high rates of preventable blindness in Nepal and returned to apply advanced techniques in microscope-directed cataract surgery he had gained under unconventional Australian eye doctor Fred Hollows. Modeling his eye-care mission for the legions of rural poor on Hollows' groundbreaking work among the Aboriginal population, Ruit pioneered the use of mobile units and surgical camps in Nepal's underserved rural areas to bring quick and efficient cataract surgery to the many poor people whose lives were ruined by preventable blindness. Attracting talented doctors from all over the world, notably the hyperactive mountaineer and Harvard-educated ophthalmologist Geoffrey Tabin, Ruit ignored his critics, who claimed the facilities were unsanitary or too costly to maintain, mastering the delicate surgery in an average of four minutes per patient, at a fraction of Western costs. Along with charitable funds from USAID and others, Tilganga, launched in 1992, expanded in 2009 and became self-sustaining by producing intraocular lenses; it has continued to thrive despite Maoist insurgency and massacre within the royal Nepalese family in 2001. The author, who evidently became a favorite of the doctors, even assisting in the hospitals, fashions a detailed, heartfelt account of the work of these dedicated pioneers. Doubly moving in light of Relin's own untimely death.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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