School eye screening and eyeglasses can inspire new dreams of students in Latur district

Imagine being a student sitting in class and being unable to keep up with your peers because the blackboard looks blurry. This is a reality for at least one in 10 students across Maharashtra who don’t have access to quality eye health care.

That’s why Operation Eyesight India and our partner hospitals are joining hands with 500 schools across Maharastra’s Latur district to provide eye health screening to 64,000 students.

“We know that vision plays a key part in a child’s learning and development. Poor vision impacts how students perform in school and this can have long-term impacts on their overall wellness and success in life,” explains Dr. Troy Cunningham, our Country Director for India. “Sadly, many students don’t realize they are suffering from vision problems. Sadder still, many families simply cannot afford to get their kids spectacles when they need them.”

We have found that between 10 and 15 per cent of students we screen will need spectacles and less than two per cent require treatment for more serious conditions – this means we expect that 9,600 students will require prescription spectacles as a result of the school screening program in Latur district.

Operation Eyesight and our partner hospital has the following objectives under this eye screening program:

1. To establish a mechanism to deliver high quality cost effective refractive services to the schools
2. To generate awareness among the parents, teachers and students about eye health seeking behavior

The planned activities are as below:

• Preparing the list of students and teachers for the identified schools
• Short listing the teachers, training and supporting them on primary eye-screening
• Organizing the school screening program along with the trained teacher to shortlist the students with eye ailments. Followed by screening by the optometrist the camp to do refraction for the referral students. Students with other eye diseases will be referred to the nearest Vision centre/hospital.
• Providing spectacles to the students with refractive error and ascertain by the teachers that the student wears the spectacle. 

Refractive free schools will give the students the ability to learn, play and develop along with their peers.

The school eye screening program will make the following impact :

1. Eye health screening to 64000 students across 500 schools in Latur district of Maharashtra
2. Dispensing prescription spectacles to 9600 students
3. Training the teachers and school staff to identify and refer eye health issues of the students
4. Improve the awareness and uptake of eye health issues among the teachers, parents and students