Open Access Article│www.njcmindia.org pISSN 0976 3325│eISSN 2229 6816 National Journal of Community Medicine│Volume 4│Issue 1│Jan – Mar 2013 Page 137 Original Article ▌ REFRACTIVE ERRORS IN SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN – DATA FROM A SCHOOL SCREENING SURVEY PROGRAMME Harpal Singh 1 , V K Saini 1 , Akhilesh Yadav 1 , Bharti Soni 1 Financial Support: None declared Conflict of interest: None declared Copy right: The Journal retains the copyrights of this article. However, reproduction of this article in the part or total in any form is permissible with due acknowledgement of the source. How to cite this article: Singh H, Saini VK, Yadav A, Soni B. Refractive Errors in School Going Children – Data from a School Screening Survey Programme. Natl J Community Med 2013; 4(1): 137- 40. Author’s Affiliation: 1 Department of Ophthalmology, People’s College of Medical Sciences and Research Center, Bhanpur, Bhopal (M.P) Correspondence: Dr. Harpal Singh Email: singhdrharpal@yahoo.in Date of Submission: 02-01-13 Date of Acceptance: 20-03-13 Date of Publication: 31-03-13 ABSTRACT Background: The prevalence of blindness in children ranges from approximately 0.3/1000 children in affluent regions to 1.5/1000 in the poorest communities. the importance of early detection and treatment of ocular diseases and visual impairment in young is obvious. Aim and objective - The basic aim of this study was to assess the status of refractive errors in school going children through school screening program. Method: the study was done on students aged 05 years to 15 years, selected randomly from rural and urban schools in and around the periphery of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Result: A total of 18,500 children were screened, Out of them 10730 were boys (58.00%) and rest 7770 (42.00%) were girls. Ocular morbidity (refractory errors) was found in 2422(13.09%) children out of which 1059 (5.72%) were boys and 1363(7.36%) were girls. Of these there were a total of 1,313 myopes ; 740 hypermetropes ; 277 with astigmatism and 92 amblyopic children. Conclusion: school screening program is an effective way to detect the causes of visual impairment in school children. Key words: Refractive error, amblyopia, myopia INTRODUCTION India has an estimated of 320,000 blind children, more than any other country in the world. 1 Even though this represents a small fraction of the total blindness, the control of blindness in children is one of the priority areas of the World Health Organization's (WHO) "Vision 2020: the right to sight" program. This is a global initiative, which was launched by WHO in 1999 to eliminate avoidable blindness from worldwide by the Year 2020 2 . Importance of early detection and treatment of visual impairment in children is very important aspect of our screening programme. In most of the countries school screening programmes are done routinely to detect the causes of ocular morbidity .The objective of school screening programme is to detect the cases of refractive errors, amblyopia, strabismus and other ocular disease. Early detection and correction of refractive error result in a decrease in the number of school children with poor sight. 3