Research

Prevalence of Refractive Error Among school children in Meseret General Primary School Gondar Town North West Ethiopia

  • The problem of visual impairment among school children is so prevalent that it greatly reduces children’s ability to study and attend classes finally leading to a grave socio economic burden to the society.

  • The study determined the prevalence of refractive error among school children of Meseret General Primary School, Gondar, Ethiopia.

  • A cross sectional study of 313 children aged 7-16 years was done. It was found that none of the children has done eye examination before and wore glasses previously.

  • 5% of the children had refractive errors. 52.78% had myopia, 25% had hyperopia and 22% had astigmatism.

  • Of the 36 pupils with refractive errors 44.44% were males and 55.56% were females. The age distribution showed myopia to be most prevalent in the age group of 14-16years (15.5%), hyperopia highest in 7-10 years (4%) and astigmatism in 11-13 years (4%).

  • The study concluded that refractive error among school children aged between 7 to 16years is significant and needs a special attention in order to prevent the consequences of severe visual impairment.

Publication date

March 28, 2019

Publication

Journal Of Health And Visual Sciences

Authors

NE Ezinne
Share this