Speaker Among Praises Sudhir Family as a Blessing to Uganda, Pledges UGX 50 Million to RR Eye Camp

By Gad Masereka 

Speaker of Parliament Anita Among described the Ruparelia family as a blessing to Uganda and backed her words with a UGX 50 million pledge to the Rajiv Ruparelia Memorial Eye Camp, at the official launch of the initiative held at Kabira Country Club on Tuesday evening.

The eye camp, scheduled to run from March 27 to 29 at Bukedea Teaching Hospital, was unveiled to a gathering of business leaders, medical professionals, government officials and partners brought together by the Ruparelia Foundation to present what organisers called one of the most ambitious community health outreaches in Eastern Uganda in recent years.

Jyotsna Ruparelia, a director at the Ruparelia Group, opened the proceedings with words that set the tone for the entire evening. “This eye camp is very special to us because it is being carried out in the name of our son Rajiv. Rajiv believed deeply in giving back. Whether through education, sports or community initiatives, he always encouraged us to do more and reach further to help people,” she said.

She shared a detail that gave the camp its most poignant context. “Rajiv actually messaged me in March last year and said, ‘Mom, just fix the date for the eye camp and I will do the rest.’ Little did I know that I would be standing here today without him.”

The Foundation and its partners committed UGX 1.7 billion to the outreach, which was designed to screen at least 2,000 patients, conduct approximately 300 cataract surgeries including 50 procedures for children, and distribute more than 800 pairs of glasses. Medical teams from Mulago National Referral Hospital and C-Care were to establish surgical theatres directly in Bukedea, bringing specialist care to a community that would otherwise have had to travel hundreds of kilometres to access it.

Dr Grace Ssali, an ophthalmologist from Mulago who participated in the planning, described the scale of Uganda’s unaddressed eye health burden and the significance of deploying specialist capacity at the community level. Speaker Among’s public praise for the Ruparelia family and her personal financial commitment added institutional weight to an initiative that had already attracted broad private sector support. For the people of Teso and Bukedea, the launch evening marked the beginning of something they had long needed and rarely been given: a promise that help was actually coming.