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One child goes blind every minute and half-a-million will have lost their sight by the end of the year. To combat this problem, LCIF and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care have collaborated to develop Sight for Kids, a program that provides vision screenings and eye health education for children.
More than 6 million children in Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India and the Philippines have been screened through the program. Program activity is expected to expand to China, Indonesia and Sri Lanka in 2008. Of those children screened, 203,930 have been referred to physicians for further evaluation, 41,818 have received glasses and 35,734 have been treated for various eye conditions.
Sight for Kids screens children for refractive error and other vision problems. Myopia (nearsightedness) causes significant vision loss in more than 15 percent of children under the age of 15 in some Asian countries, according to a U.S. National Eye Institute study. Half of all cases of refractive error (nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism) remain undetected and untreated. The consequences of uncorrected refractive error can be devastating. The leading cause of blindness in children and adolescents is uncorrected refractive error. Also, since learning is often visually based, uncorrected vision severely harms a child’s development.
Johnson & Johnson has committed US$1.3 million to fund Sight for Kids. The screenings are coordinated by local Lions, Johnson & Johnson staff and local medical personnel. |
