Tej Kohli and Sanduk Ruit are firmly united in their new joint fight to cure blindness, with new mission to screen 1,000,000 and cure 300,000 by 2026. In March 2021 the new Tej Kohli & Ruit Foundation conducted its first high volume cataract outreach surgeries in the highly symbolic location of Lumbini in Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha, where the not-for-profit organisation screened 900 patients and cured 312 of cataract blindness during a four-day mission. A second surgical camp in Solukhumbu, in the foothills of Mount Everest, occurred just a few days after this video was filmed and completed surgeries so that a further 171 people were cured of blindness. For more information visit www.tejkohlifoundation.com

Just next to Nepal's Mayadevi temple, known as where Buddha was born more than 2,600 years ago, hundreds of people wait outside a makeshift hospital hoping their fading eyesight will be restored by eye surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. (April 8) Subscribe for more Breaking News: http://smarturl.it/AssociatedPress Website: https://apnews.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP Facebook: https://facebook.com/APNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ ​ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c267e794193043b9908775b127a28763

In episode three of Gracie' Story, aspiring actress Gracie McGonigal receives her new 3D printed bionic arm from Tej Kohli at the Tej Kohli Foundation. Tej Kohli is a technologist and investor who backs ventures in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology. Tej Kohli is the owner of the Zibel Real Estate portfolio and of e-commerce platforms including dynacart. Tej Kohli is engaged in rebuilding people and communities through the not-for-profit Tej Kohli Foundation. Learn more at www.TejKohliFoundation.com and www.TejKohli.com

Holiday Hunger has become even more visible and regrettably even more pervasive in the aftermath of the Coronavirus lockdown in the UK. Solving the problem of hunger amongst families with small children will require coordinated and sustainable efforts across all sectors. The Tej Kohli Foundation operates a number of 'Food Support' programmes in the UK, including the YouCubeBox.com project. This BBC News report visits the YouCube project that is being delivered with Southall Community Alliance as well as speaking to one of the families that has received YouCube.

Tej Kohli, a London-based entrepreneur and philanthropist, has pledged $2 million to Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston to fund innovation in research to cure corneal blindness, including the development of promising biotechnology solutions. The move reflects Kohli’s belief in the promise of new technologies to build a better world as he seeks to find a solution to eliminating avoidable corneal blindness that is not dependent on transplantation. Kohli has already made substantial progress in his global mission to eradicate avoidable corneal blindness by 2030. The philanthropic Tej Kohli Cornea Institute in Hyderabad is an eminent institution for corneal research and expertise. Between 2016 and 2018 the institute saw 167,321 outpatient visits, collected 26,269 donor corneas, utilized 15,784 cornea and completed 31,511 surgical procedures. 285 million people in the world have a visual impairment and 39 million people are blind, according to the World Health Organization. Blindness is heavily impacted by poverty, with up to 14 of the 39 million living in India. Yet a good proportion of blindness, including 75% of corneal disease, is curable. 12.7 million of the world’s blind are waiting for cornea transplants, including six million in India, and only one in seventy of those on waiting lists receive a corneal transplant each year. Solving the problem of corneal blindness will require an affordable non-surgical solution. Massachusetts Eye and Ear (MEE) is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School (HMS) and its Department of Ophthalmology is the world’s largest vision research and clinical enterprise. Between 2016 and 2018, MEE ophthalmologists conducted 521,805 patient visits and performed 101,941 ophthalmic surgeries and procedures. A long-time leader in research and clinical care for retinal disease, MEE performed the first FDA-approved gene therapy for an inherited disease in March 2018. Its clinician scientists are currently conducting more than 110 clinical studies and trials, in order to investigate new therapies across a broad array of vision disease and disorders. The Tej Kohli Cornea Program at MEE will accelerate innovative and collaborative research to achieve unprecedented breakthroughs in corneal disease. The program will pursue pathways to cure corneal blindness through prevention and treatment, including cutting-edge molecular technology for rapid diagnosis and early detection of corneal infection and GelCORE, an adhesive biomaterial for replacing corneal tissue. The clinician/scientists who will lead this work are: • Reza Dana, MD, PhD, MSc, an internationally recognized expert in corneal disorders and ocular inflammation. Dr. Dana holds the Claes H. Dohlman Professorship in Ophthalmology at HMS and is director of the cornea service at the MEE. • Michael Gilmore, PhD, is the founder and principal investigator of the Harvard-wide Program on Antibiotic Resistance. Dr. Gilmore holds the Sir William Osler Professorship in Ophthalmology at HMS. • James Chodosh, MD, MPH, holds the David G. Cogan Professorship in Ophthalmology in the field of Cornea and External Disease and is an associate director of the Infectious Disease Institute in the Department of Ophthalmology at HMS. The work of these investigators follows a tradition of pioneering innovations in corneal and immunology research at MEE. Claes H. Dohlman, MD invented the Boston Keratoprosthesis (B-KPro), the most popular artificial cornea in the world and Dr. Chodosh has expanded its scope, restoring vision to those with blinding corneal disease and injury. Dr. Gilmore published the definitive research on “super bugs” discovering the mechanism used by microorganisms to acquire multidrug resistance. Last March, Dr. Dana led a pre-clinical study published in Science Advances – showing early indications that GelCORE may be able to seal cuts or ulcers on the cornea and then encourage the regeneration of corneal tissue. Tej Kohli’s goal of curing corneal blindness is being pursued through philanthropy, including the $2 million donation to MEE, as well as through business ventures and investments in technology. Kohli recently acquired a proprietary regenerative biotechnology that is currently in clinical trials. If successful as an off-the-shelf solution, Kohli believes that this regenerative biotechnology could be immediately relevant to up to one third of the 12.7 million who are currently waiting for corneal transplants world-wide.

Funded by Wendy and Tej Kohli, the Tej Kohli Foundation is a non-profit organisation that was started in 2005 with the initial goal of helping disadvantaged children break free from poverty. Today the Tej Kohli Foundation is a multidisciplinary global hub for humanitarian technologists who are developing solutions to major global health challenges whilst also making direct interventions that transform individual lives around the world. The Tej Kohli Foundation is best known for it's mission to eradicate corneal blindness worldwide by 2035. Visual impairment is a public health problem of global proportions. More than two hundred and eighty-five million people worldwide have some form of visual impairment. Thirty-nine million of them are blind. Ninety percent of those affected by blindness and severe visual impairment live in the poorest countries in the world. Fourteen million live in India alone. Yet a good proportion of worldwide blindness, including 75% of corneal disease, is curable. Access to affordable treatment can only be achieved through systemic long-term efforts to create widespread availability of high quality eye care facilities that are delivered by people who have the resources, technical skills and compassion to handle diverse population segments. Patients of the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute receive completely free treatment. In the last two years the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute has hosted more than one hundred and sixty-seven thousand outpatient visits, collected twenty-six thousand donor cornea and utilized nearly sixteen thousand corneas for transplants. The Institute undertook more than thirty-one thousand surgical procedures, delivered over seven hundred presentations, published one hundred and forty-eight publications and trained more than one hundred and twenty clinicians. Blindness is heavily impacted by poverty. Between six and seven million of the twelve million people worldwide who are currently waiting for Cornea transplants live in India. Whilst the average age of a patient needing a corneal transplant in Canada is seventy-five, in India the average age is just sixteen years old, which severely impacts life prospects and outcomes. By also taking education, treatment and preventative medicine directly to the poorer rural areas where sixty-six per cent of Indians live, the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute is able to additionally target these high-impact populations that are living with curable corneal blindness. At just one rural village location that is not reached by any charities or NGOs, the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute recently completed more than two thousand Cornea transplants during a single year. Preventing and controlling and eliminating corneal blindness is also a global objective. Achieving this mission will require a scalable and affordable solution for the masses, and through the acquisition of proprietary new biotechnologies, philanthropist Tej Kohli is dedicated to making this a reality. Through international collaboration between leading clinicians, technology pioneers and global hubs of excellence such as the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute, it is a now a visible reality that by 2030 avoidable corneal blindness could be controlled, reduced and then eradicated worldwide.

The Tej Kohli Foundation's Future Bionics program funds bionic arms for British children from Bristol-based robotics pioneer Open Bionics. Open Bionics is building and developing the next generation of low-cost bionic limbs that turn disabilities into superpowers. The program highlights how technology can substantially improve the lives and confidence of young people living with disabilities. It aims to inspire and influence others to follow this lead. The Open Bionics ‘Hero Arm’, which can be controlled with the electrical signals generated by a user’s muscles, has superior multi-grip functionality that enables users to perform many more everyday activities compared to traditional prosthetics. The enhanced ability of the user to be able to personalise their 3D-printed Open Bionics Hero Arm is also a huge boost to mental well-being and to perceived social acceptance.

​@TejKohliFoundation is building an interdisciplinary hub of innovation for the development of scientific and technological solutions that can eliminate blindness in poor communities worldwide. Interdisciplinary innovation is at the heart of the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute, and our mission is a world where nobody is blind because they cannot afford or access treatment. As part of this mission, we have made annual grant funding available to scientific and technological projects based in the United Kingdom. To be eligible for a grant a project must be able to demonstrate a clear path toward alleviating corneal blindness in the poor countries that are home to 90% of those living with blindness and severe visual impairment. Eligible projects must also have a current or prior attachment to an established and recognised UK institution such as a university, hospital or institute; or have access to the infrastructure and resources of a large and established organisation. Projects should be seeking to use technology, science, research or some other novel innovation or application. BACKGROUND The Tej Kohli Cornea Institute was established in 2015 at the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, a World Health Organization collaborating centre that is a global leader in research and development, preventative medicine and Corneal transplants. Between 2016 and 2019 the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute at LV Prasad welcomed 223,404 outpatients, completed 43,255 surgical procedures, collected 38,225 donor corneas into its eye bank, utilized 22,176 donor corneas, trained 152 clinicians, published 202 paper and gave 892 educational presentations. In 2019 alone, 5,736 patients were cured of blindness. Stories of the many patients whose lives were transformed thanks to free treatment at the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute can be watched on the @TejKohliFoundation YouTube channel. This incarnation of the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute was uniquely adept at solving the problems of reaching people living with blindness or visual impairment in the hard-to-reach rural areas where 66% of Indians live. But after making tens of thousands of treatment interventions to end the poverty blindness in India, from 2020 the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute is refocusing its efforts on the development of an affordable, accessible and scalable solution to corneal blindness. Whilst direct interventions can change lives by taking existing treatments and cures into underserved communities, in order to eradicate corneal blindness worldwide will require new treatments and solutions derived from scientific and technological innovations. By evolving into a multidisciplinary global hub for innovation, the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute mission is a world where nobody is blind because they cannot afford or access treatment. Find out more at www.tejkohlifoundation.com