International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | October 2018 | Vol 5 | Issue 10 Page 4608 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Sachan N et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2018 Oct;5(10):4608-4612 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Prevalence of undetected refractive errors among school children: a cross sectional study in urban Etawah, India Neha Sachan 1 , Dhiraj Srivastava 1 , P. K. Jain 1 , Prashant Kumar Bajpai 1 , Santosh Kumar Singh 2 *, Jyoti Mehra 1 INTRODUCTION The refractive error is an optical defect, intrinsic to the eye which prevents light from being brought to a single point focus on the retina, due to which normal vision is reduced. The diagnosis and treatment of refractive error is quite easy to reduce impaired vision. Still in India, refractive error is the second most common cause of patients to consult an ophthalmologist. At present, it is estimated that 153 million people globally over 5 years of age who have uncorrected refractive error, become visually impaired and out of them 8 million are blind. Although refractive errors cannot be prevented but can be treated. Under the National Society of Prevention of Blindness, a survey was conducted in India in 1974 among children to assess the ocular conditions. It was found that 67.37% of the children had some form of eye disease and out of which refractive error was 18%. 1 Globally it is estimated that 2.3 billion people have refractive errors; out of which 1.8 billion have access to adequate eye examination and affordable corrections and 500 million people with uncorrected error causing either blindness or impaired vision (they are mostly belonging to developing countries). 2 The uncorrected refractive errors are responsible for about 19.7% of the blindness in India. 3 The World Health Organization has launched a Global Initiative Vision 2020 in 1999 with the slogan “The Right to sight’’. The priority has been chosen on the ABSTRACT Background: Refractive error is the most common cause of blindness which can be corrected easily. Uncorrected refractive errors are responsible for about 19.7% of blindness in India. The aim and objectives of the study were to find out the prevalence of undetected refractive errors in school children and to find out associated factors related to it. Methods: This was a cross sectional study in which school children studying in class 5th to 11th were included. Vision of all the children was checked by using Snellen’s chart. The responses were recorded on a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. Data entry was done in MS-EXCEL sheet and analysis was done by using SPSS-23. Results: There are total 350 students out of which 200 (57%) are males and 150 (43%) are females. The undetected refractive error is present in 12% males and 15.3% females. Thus, 47 out of 350 (13.4%) of the children had prevalence of undetected refractive errors. Conclusions: It is recommended that adequate preschool examination of the children be made mandatory as a part of the admission policy of all the schools. In addition, there should be periodic examination of the school children at least on annual basis. Keywords: Undetected refractive error, Blindness, Snellen’s chart 1 Department of Community Medicine, 2 Department of Surgery, Uttar Pradesh University of Medical Sciences, Saifai, Etawah, Uttar Pradesh, India Received: 16 August 2018 Accepted: 14 September 2018 *Correspondence: Dr. Santosh Kumar Singh, E-mail: drsantosh19851@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20184018