Sight For Kids

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, eyeglasses and other treatments, and eye health education for children.

More than 10 million children in Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the Philippines have been screened through the program. Of those children screened, 245,498 have been referred to physicians for further evaluation, 64,669 have received glasses and 47,476 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$1.55 million to fund Sight for Kids. The screenings are coordinated by local Lions, Johnson & Johnson staff and local medical personnel.