by Joshua Friedman

Lions in Thailand are returning to school in droves. They’re not there to learn but to screen for vision problems and to distribute eyeglasses. In three years, teams of Lions, healthcare workers and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care employees have screened nearly 350,000 children for refractive error and other vision problems.

The screenings are part of Sight for Kids, a highly ambitious and successful collaboration of LCIF and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care to offer vision screenings and eye health education to children. The company has committed up to US$835,000 over four years to fund Sight for Kids in Korea, MD300 Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, China and Malaysia as well as Thailand.

Myopia (nearsightedness) causes significant vision impairment in more than 15% of children under age 15 in some Asian countries, according to a U.S. National Eye Institute study. Regrettably, the same study revealed that half of all cases of refractive error in school children remain undetected and uncorrected.

A Sight for Kids event in January at one of the Bangkok Municipal Authority Schools brought together two dozen Lions, several nurses and more than 70 Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Asia-Pacific Management Team members. The volunteers distributed eye glasses to 200 children who had been screened at an earlier date. Approximately 750 additional children were screened for refractive error and other vision problems. Those children would be given glasses and receive any needed hospital care in the near future. On hand as a guest of honor was the Deputy Governor of Bangkok.

Since its inception in October 2002 in Thailand, Sight for Kids has screened 345,373 children in 431 schools in Bangkok. Eyeglasses were prescribed to 6,245 children and an additional 231 children required hospital treatment for conditions such as squint, amblyopia and ptosis. The program committee is continuing to provide follow-up in order that all children requiring hospital treatment receive it. The treatment numbers, therefore, may increase in the coming months.

The screenings have been done by 921 Lions, schoolteachers, and other volunteers who have been trained to conduct these school-based screenings. Helping to coordinate the program is Past International Director Vuthi Boonnikornvoravith, who coordinates the program’s collaborative efforts between Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Lions of Thailand, the Thai Ministry of Public Health and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. The program also benefits from the technical expertise and guidance of Dr. K. Konyama, LCIF SightFirst Technical Advisor for Southeast Asia.

Sight for Kids provides vision screening skills to schoolteachers in Thailand so that they can continue caring for the vision health of their students in the future. Sight for Kids is not only valuable because it detects eye disease early but also because it fosters cooperation among educational personnel, health care personnel and Lions volunteers.

Sight for Kids will expand to other public schools in Bangkok and to school districts up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Bangkok. An additional 420,000 children will be screened by the end of the calendar year. Lions are giving the gift of vision to children at an amazingly low cost: the average cost of a screening is about 20 cents (U.S. dollars) per child.