J Clin Ophthalmol Eye Disord | Volume 1, Issue 4 | Short Communication | Open Access
Krishnaiah S*, Rajesh P and Ramani RV
Department of Community Outreach Services, Sankara Eye Foundation-India, Tamil Nadu, India
*Correspondance to: Sannapaneni Krishnaiah
Fulltext PDFPurpose: To estimate the magnitude of childhood blindness in India and understand the innovative strategies to tackle this blindness.
Methods: One of an innovative program “Rainbow” was reviewed over a period of time and determined the magnitude of childhood blindness in India. The magnitude of the childhood blindness was extrapolated to the Indian population as per the Census 2011 estimates.
Results: The Rainbow program screened a total of 5,660,655 children of 29,216 schools/Anganwadis. Of these, a total of 84,468 (1.492%; 95% Confidence Intervals (CI): 1.482, 1.502) children were found to have refractive error problem for which the spectacles were distributed. The prevalence of childhood blindness was estimated to be 0.169% (95% CI: 0.166, 0.173). Conclusions: If the prevalence estimate of 0.17% is extrapolated to the Indian children population, There would be 802,358 children would have been blind in India in the year 2011.
Childhood blindness; School screening programs; Rainbow; India
Krishnaiah S, Rajesh P, Ramani RV. Prevention of Blindness and Visual Impairment in Children through Innovative Strategies in India: An Experience from a Sankara Eye Foundation India. J Clin Ophthalmol Eye Disord. 2017; 1(4): 1019.