Abstract
Introduction Refractive error is one of the major causes of blurred vision. It is a common eye disorder even in children. The World Health Organization had estimated refractive error to cause visual impairment to about 153 million people around the world with over 1.4 million children affected. Eighty percent (80%) of whom live in developing countries. The right to sight, a global initiative launched by World Health Organization, has the main aim of eliminating avoidable visual impairment and blindness at a global level. In order to achieve this goal, visual screening in pre-school and school children has long been a tradition in developed nations of the world. The significance of this cannot be overemphasized, especially with the already established correlation between school performance and visual status. However, in developing countries visual screening for children is not yet well established, thereby leaving many children with undetected refractive error, which could result in visual impairment. This study was aimed at evaluating the prevalence of refractive error among early primary school age children at Ado-Odo Ota Local Government Area(LGA) in Ogun State, Nigeria. Methodology: The study was designed as a cross-sectional study. It employed a multi-staged sampling method to recruit 205 pupils aged 5-9 years attending schools in Ado-Odo Ota as study participants to determine the prevalence of refractive error among the pupils attending primary schools in this area. Following ocular pathology screening for the children, subjects found fit were refracted both objectively and subjectively using auto-refractor and trial lenses respectively. Result: A prevalence of 30.73% of refractive error was recorded. Myopia had the highest prevalence (24.88%), followed by astigmatism 3.42% and hyperopia with the least prevalence of 2.44%. Older children had higher frequencies of refractive error than the younger ones with the males having more refractive error than the females (19.51% and 11.22%) respectively. Conclusion: The study concluded that refractive error is significantly present among this population and recommended that parents should ensure that their children are screened for refractive error, and that government should introduce school health programs to curb the growing menace of visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive error.
Prevalence of refractive error and visual impairment among school-age children of Hargesia, Somaliland, Somalia