Access to spectacles tough for students

A recent study of school children in the State, takenup over a period of fouryears in 354 different schools by researchers, indicated that 38 per cent of children, who have vision problems, do not get access to proper spectacles.

Hyderabad; Ensuring access to spectacles among school children and providing them with timely treatment from eyerelated refractive errors that result in blurred and impaired vision, continues to remain a challenge in Telangana.

A recent study of school children in the State, takenup over a period of fouryears in 354 different schools by researchers, indicated that 38 per cent of children, who have vision problems, do not get access to proper spectacles.

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Poor eyesight due to refractive errors (RE) like myopia (shortsightedness), hypermyopia (long sightedness) etc among school children, can negatively impact their academic performance, career prospects, productivity and quality of life. And this is what is happening to school children due to limited access to treatment for eye-related errors and eye-glasses for vision correction.

The study titled ‘Effective refractive error coverage and spectacle coverage among school children in Telangana, South India’, conducted by researchers from Hyderabad-based LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), published in Nature journal (March, 2024) also measured effective refractive error coverage (e- REC), which is an indication of access to adequate refractive correction like spectacles, eye-lenses, among children.

“Results of the study indicate that e-REC must be increased by at least 43 per cent in this region,” the researchers including Winston Prakash, Dr Rohit Khanna, Dr Srinivas Marmamula and Dr Jill Keefe, said. There is a need for increasing spectacle coverage among the school-children in Telangana by 38 per cent and also increase e-REC coverage by 43 per cent, the researchers pointed out.

The LVPEI study screened 7,74,185 school children of which 51.49 per cent boys and the prevalence of Uncorrected Refractive Errors (URE) was 1.44 per cent, which works out to over 11,000 school children. Older school children (11 years to 15 years) were 17 times more vulnerable than 4 years to 5 year-olds for uncorrected refractive errors. The risk of uncorrected refractive errors was also higher in urban schoolchildren i.e. three times higher than children in the tribal region.

Among girls, the risk of no correction for refractive errors is 1.3 times higher than boys and in children with disabilities, it was 2.6 times higher, the LVPEI study added.