Three things you need to know about child eye health

1) Globally, at least 450 million children have a sight condition that needs treatment, with 90 million children living with sight loss.

• 448 million children and adolescents have refractive errors^1,2
• 90 million children and adolescents live with sight loss³
  • 2 million are living with blindness.
  • 30 million have moderate to severe sight loss.
  • 58 million have mild sight loss.

Unfortunately, we lack comprehensive data on visual impairment in children. However, it is estimated that 40% of children are blind from eye conditions that could have been prevented or could be managed if the child had access to eye care services.⁴

We also know the leading causes of blindness and moderate-severe vision loss among children include uncorrected refractive error, cataract, retinopathy of prematurity, congenital ocular anomalies, corneal scarring, and cerebral visual impairment.⁵

The good news is that if refractive error is excluded, the number of children who are blind from eye conditions is falling in all regions, due to the reduction of corneal blindness due to vitamin A deficiency and measles.⁶

However, the prevalence of myopia in children is rapidly increasing in many parts of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this – myopia progression among older schoolchildren increased by 1.5 times since COVID-19 began.⁷ The rate of myopia varies considerably within and between regions⁸, but in 2020, 60% of children in Asia and 40% of children in Europe had myopia.⁹

2) Vision impairment in children can have lifelong consequences

Numerous studies have also shown that vision loss is often associated with various negative health outcomes and poor quality of life, with lifelong consequences¹⁰. For example, young children with early onset severe vision loss can experience delayed motor, language, emotional, social and cognitive development.¹¹

If a child has vision loss, this can really impact their educational outcomes, contribute to low self-esteem and future socio-economic potential.^{12,13,14,15,16} The Lancet Global Health Commission on Global Eye Health¹⁷ reported that children with vision loss in low- and middle-income countries are up to five times less likely to be in formal education.¹⁸

3) We need to urgently scale up and strengthen child eye health services

There are several positive examples across the world from diverse settings that could guide our approaches to reducing unnecessary vision loss among our children.

The recent developments in global eye health advocacy, increased attention on child eye health in global bodies and technology advances in detecting eye disease and providing care offers hope for a brighter future for our children.

However, we need to urgently scale up and strengthen child eye health services. As a sector we need to:

• Advocate for an enabling environment where every child has access to eye health screening from birth, examination as required and affordable solutions for their vision-related issues.
• Improve access and provide comprehensive services at the community, primary, secondary, and tertiary level to increase reach and reduce vision loss in children.
• Offer school eye health programmes that are integrated within educational policy, systems, and reporting.
• Collaborate beyond the eye health sector.

Explore more:

• The IAPB School Eye Health Workgroup has released School Eye Health Guidelines to help deliver standardised comprehensive eye health services to more than 700 million children attending schools around the world.
• Focus on Child Eye Health engages some of the world’s best and brightest thought leaders throughout the year to share knowledge, inspire action, discuss ideas and push Child Eye Health to the forefront of pressing development issues.