Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

A Prospective Study to Assess the Quality of Preliminary Eye Screening Done on School Children by Teachers in Andhra Pradesh

¹Gullapalli Pratibha Rao International Centre for Advancement of Rural Eye Care – L V Prasad Eye Institute, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India

²Bausch and Lomb School of Optometry - L V Prasad Eye Institute, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India

*Corresponding Author:

Jyothi Korani MSW
GPR International Centre for Advancement of Rural Eye Care
L V Prasad Eye Institute
Kallam Anji Reddy Campus
Banjara Hills Roar # 2, Hyderabad, India
Tel: +91-40-30615619
E-mail: jyothi@lvpei.org

Received date: January 24, 2015; Accepted date: March 30, 2015; Published date: April 03, 2015

Citation: Korani J, Williams JD, Rose A, Khanna R (2015) A Prospective Study to Assess the Quality of Preliminary Eye Screening Done on School Children by Teachers in Andhra Pradesh. J Community Med Health Educ 5:342. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000342

Copyright: © 2015 Korani J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Aim: To assess the quality of vision screening done by trained schoolteachers on schoolchildren. Method: This study was carried out in Greater Hyderabad by selecting 10 schools in 3 different clusters by means of systematic random sampling. Teachers were imparted training for detecting vision defects and important ocular conditions and were permitted to screen the students using a protocol ascribed to them. Students who were screened by teachers were rescreened by optometrist to compare and analyse the outcome of the training imparted. Results: A total of 25 schoolteachers were trained and utilized for screening 600 students in age ranging from 8 to 13 (mean is 10.5 and ±SD is 1.87) girls constituting 55%. The impact of training increased knowledge level to 88%. Similarity found in detection of children with poor visual acuity <6/9 by both ‘the trained teachers and optometrist. Significant eye conditions which required early intervention were detected with the help of signs and symptoms learnt through the training (Kappa statistic=0.95) suggesting an excellent agreement among the teachers and optometrist. Conclusion: The study results suggest that trained teachers can be relied upon for screening children to identify various eye conditions including refractive errors. This study recommends incorporating a module on vision screening in the teachers’ education curriculum and conducting screening in schools on a regular basis.

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