Sudhir Leaves Teso Smiling: How Three Days In Bukedea Restored Sight, Dignity and Hope

By Gad Masereka

For three days, the grounds of Bukedea Teaching Hospital became something rare in Uganda’s public health landscape: a place where the most vulnerable citizens arrived in need and left with more than they had come for.

From Friday March 27 to Sunday March 29, the Rajiv Ruparelia Memorial Eye Camp transformed Bukedea into what organisers described as a sanctuary of restoration. Thousands of patients from across the Teso sub-region and beyond, some from as far as neighbouring districts and parts of Kenya, made their way to Bukedea seeking treatment for eye conditions ranging from failing sight to complete blindness.

The numbers were striking. Thousands were screened. Hundreds underwent surgery or received eyeglasses. Medication and referrals were dispensed for complex cases. But among all the statistics that will define the camp’s legacy, none carries more human weight than the moment between businessman Dr Sudhir Ruparelia and a 104-year-old woman named Esther Amoding.

Frail and previously struggling with mobility, Amoding received a brand-new wheelchair from Sudhir on Saturday evening in a moment witnesses described as deeply emotional. She broke into prayers and blessings, her words filled with gratitude that seemed too large for the occasion and yet entirely proportionate to a lifetime of waiting. “I can see my grandchildren again,” she said quietly. “God bless this man. He has given me back my world.”

Nearby, a farmer who had spent nearly a decade watching his vision fade blinked into clarity after successful cataract surgery. “For ten years I could not recognise faces properly. Today, everything is clear again. This is a new life,” he said.

Sheena Ruparelia, who played an active role in the camp alongside her parents, reflected on what the outreach had come to represent. “We are not just screening eyes,” she said. “We are giving people back their lives, their livelihoods, their independence. That is what Rajiv would have wanted.”

Sudhir, alongside his wife Jyotsna, moved through the hospital grounds with an ease that suggested this was not performance but genuine engagement. At the closing ceremony, he was formally inducted into the Iteso community as Eminat Sudhir, a cultural recognition that underscored how deeply the family’s work has taken root in the region. He also pledged UGX 50 million to the Kingdom of Teso, and a new ambulance donated by Speaker Anita Among and MP-elect David Beecham Okwere was handed over to Bukedea District.

For communities that have long existed at the margins of Uganda’s healthcare system, the camp offered a different experience, one in which they were not an afterthought but the entire point. That, perhaps more than any surgical figure or donation amount, is the measure by which the Rajiv Ruparelia Memorial Eye Camp will be remembered in Teso.