The month of August is specially dedicated to children’s eyes and safety, in other words, much emphasis will be laid on preventing vision loss, eye injuries, and the overall care of children’s-eyesight.
Statistics have shown that one out of 20 children within the age bracket of 3-5 has challenges with their vision.
If not responded to at the nick of time could lead to vision loss permanently.
Despite these disturbing numbers, records also show that 80 percent of preschoolers do not get their eyes screened.
The purpose of this month’s campaign on children’s health isn’t just for the usual awareness.
As medical practitioners specializing in eye treatment, we use this time of the year to encourage parents to be more observant of their children’s eye health.
To avoid vision-threatening conditions, parents have a huge role to play by ensuring regular eye examination as this would ensure early detection and appropriate treatment.
Eye examination for children is extremely important because changes in vision can take place with or without the knowledge of your children.
Look at it this way, how do you expect toddlers who can’t even talk, to express to you the challenges around their vision?
The purpose of driving awareness for this Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month is to ensure that parents own up to the responsibility of taking their children’s vision health with the priority:
- Spreading the word from the point of information about the importance of a health vision
- Knowing more about the early detection of challenges in children
- Raising awareness on preventing eye injuries in children, especially sport-related eye injury
- Saving children’s eyesight as parents can be guided on how to help their children in a vision challenge situation
So what can you actually do on children’s eye health and safety awareness month?
With a whole month dedicated to gaining knowledge about your children’s eye health and safety, parents can immensely benefit in this period as it concerns their child’s health and life.
Working on some of the stated objectives, you can play role by supporting the campaign on awareness concerning eye conditions in children and ways they can be prevented.
You can also support eye health and safety programs designed specifically for children.
One thing parents must note here is that children at the age of 6 months should have an eye exam and also again at age 3.
On resuming school, eye examinations must now be regular
Not forgetting that 80% of the learning process at that age is visual, meaning that vision problems not attended to at that age lead to poor performance in school.