HYDERABAD: LV Prasad Eye Institute is observing the Children’s Eye Care Week from November 11 to 16. The theme this year is ‘less screen time, more outdoor activities for better child eye health’.
Experts are concerned about growing levels of short-sightedness (Myopia) in children and are of the view that it is rampant due to lack of natural light. As children are hooked to their screens for longer hours, there is increasing concern about potential harm to their visual development. “With the increase in the prevalence of myopia in the last few decades and being associated with sight-threatening ocular diseases in later life, myopia has become an important global health problem. It is estimated that about half of the entire world’s population (5 billion) will be affected by myopia by the year 2050,” said Dr. Ramesh Kekunnaya, head of Child Sight Institute at L V Prasad Eye Institute.
Some of the common eyesight issues among children are refractive errors, lazy eye, squint, retinal and optic nerve issues, added the doctor. He stressed that children below the age of three years should not be exposed to screens.
Talking about the high prevalence of eye problems among premature babies, Dr Subhadra Jalali, director of Retina Institute & Newborn Eye Health Alliance (NEHA) in LVPIE said,” Due to lack of health screening after birth in India, many eyesight problems go undetected. Premature babies are susceptible to ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity) blindness, which has to be treated within 30 days of birth. It is not curable after that.”
“LVPEI is one of the world’s first centres to have a dedicated one-month regular ROP training program to take care of premature babies’ eyes and vision and has trained more than 350 specialists across the world, besides handling more than 20,000 babies at its Hyderabad Centre. The program is now running at not only the tertiary centres in Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, and Bhubaneswar but is also now being extended to smaller towns such as Adilabad,” she added.
