The Study of Refractive Status among School Children

Childhood visual impairment due to refractive errors is one of the most common problems among school-age children and is the second leading cause for treatable blindness [1]. Vision 2020: The Right to Sight, a global initiative launched by a coalition of non-government organizations and the World Health Organization (WHO) [2] is to eliminate avoidable visual impairment and blindness on a global scale. In India, the problem of uncorrected refractive error is particularly common [3] and the refractive errors have become one of the leading causes for visual impairment and blindness, especially among children [4]. In order to reduce the occurrence of avoidable visual impairment and blindness caused by refractive errors, there is an urgent need for obtaining the epidemiological information on refractive errors and other eye diseases among school-age children. Although there are some reports in this research field from India, the subjects are mainly children attending schools or patients seen in eye clinics [5] which may not be representative of all school-age children. Furthermore, the majority of the reported population-based epidemiological researches on eye diseases among school-age children [6, 7, 8] are conducted in regions near the national capital or in developed coastal metropolis, which may not be fully representative of the whole India, especially the developing regions. In order to obtain the refractive status in school-age children in Western India, we selected Navsari District, as the study site for our population-based research. The focus of our research was to determine the factors on the prevalence of refractive errors within a single ethnicity. Additionally, with a comparison with previous reports [6, 7, 8] our results may provide a basis for establishing effective strategies for the prevention and treatment of refractive errors among school-age children in India. The goal of present study is to find the Prevalence of refractive Error in School Children’s and also compare of refractive status among school children in previous year and the same year. The purpose of study is also to assess the prevalence of type of refractive error and also find the impact of refractive error correction on student’s study.