School Eye Health in Nigeria: The Situation Now and the Way Forward
Keywords:
teachers, uncorrected refractive errors, visual impairment, blindness, school eye health, School childrenAbstract
There is a strong link between children’s visual health and the quality of their learning and educational achievement. Any problems with their vision can produce many years of living with blindness and vision impairment if not addressed promptly and properly which can in turn affect their future, their quality of life and have an impact on their economic productivity. This can be adequately addressed by putting in place a sustainable school eye health programme strengthened by a viable referral system. School eye health programmes provide a unique opportunity to deliver comprehensive eye health services to school-going children especially when supported by a monitoring and evaluation feedback system. In Nigeria, even though there are pockets of areas where this has been carried out irregularly in the past, this is not yet a widespread practice due to logistic, manpower challenges and poor political will. Currently school eye health programmes appear to be non-existent in this country. The outlook is worse for out-of-school children, of which Nigeria has the largest number worldwide. The focus of this article is to discuss how to achieve and sustain effective school eye health programmes.
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