Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) announced the results of the vision screening survey for school students (year 2019-2020). The survey detected that rates of abnormal visual acuity (visual acuity less than 6/6) among government and private school students, were 12.24 percent and 21.34 percent respectively.
Head of the Non-Communicable Disease Section at the MoPH Dr. Kholood Al-Mutawa explained that the survey was carried out by MoPH in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and the Primary Health Care Corporation, and included around 100,000 students from 166 government schools and 140 private schools.
Dr. Shadi Al-Ashwal, an ophthalmologist at MoPH, said that the State of Qatar conducts this survey annually, indicating that school nurses should examine visual acuity and refer students who suffer from vision impairment to ophthalmologists at health centers, to be examined and managed accordingly.
It is worthy to note that 49 percent of the low vision causes are due to uncorrected refractive errors such as myopia, hyperopia and astigmatism. Furthermore, children are more affected by this disease than others because their visual system is responsible for about 80 percent of what they learn. Therefore, improving vision contributes to improve their academic level and skills and prevents some complications such as lazy eye.
MoPH celebrates tomorrow the World Sight Day 2020, with a theme of "Hope in Sight", it aims to promote healthy eyes, and to provide early diagnosis and effective treatment for causes of blindness.
from Gulf Times https://ift.tt/3iG0BmE
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