The Honorable Chief Justice, Chairman and Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and dear friends.

I would like to express my heart-felt gratitude to the Trustees of the Foundation for selecting me as the winner of the 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award for peace and international understanding.

I am extremely excited and humbled by this honour given to me.

On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of blinded cataract patients for whom I have played a small part in restoring their sight and giving them dignity in their lives, I accept this prestigious Award.

Cataract continues to be the most common cause of blindness worldwide. It is estimated that nearly eighty million people are blind with cataract, and 90% of cataracts are found in the developing world. For nearly twenty years now, we have been working to provide a successful model of high-volume cataract surgery with a good vision outcome to be made available and accessible to the developing world. This required continuing innovations both in eye service management and eye surgery.

Extensive research and development was done to produce low-cost and robust equipment, such as portable operating microscopes and YAG lasers. We have been successful in manufacturing state-of-the-art intra-ocular lenses locally for a unit cost of US$4, which was available elsewhere for US$100. The logistics, economics and efficiency of cataract surgery in its entirety was addressed to suit the large backlog of cataract blindness in poorer countries.

Since then, this system has been introduced successfully to many countries crossing geographical and political boundaries. The training of surgeons, the establishment of eye centres and the conduct of model workshops have now spread to more than fifty countries globally.

I once again would like to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, as this Award will certainly give me more credibility and challenge me to continue my unfinished agenda. I would also like to acknowledge the support of that most wonderful group of people whom I work with at the Tilganga Eye Centre in Nepal, and our partners, the Fred Hollows Foundation and the Himalayan Cataract Project.