Refractive Errors

Did you know that the problem of blurred vision is a very common issue and yet remains one of the biggest challenges that the eye health community faces?

According to the World Health Organization, refractive errors are common eye disorders which prevent the eye from clearly focusing the images from the outside world. It results in blurred vision. There are four types of refractive errors:

• Myopia (near-sightedness)- difficulty in seeing distant objects clearly;
• Hyperopia (far-sightedness)- difficulty in seeing close objects clearly;
• Astigmatism - distorted vision resulting from an irregularly curved cornea; and
• Presbyopia -leads to difficulty in reading or seeing at arm's length, it is linked to ageing and occurs almost universally.

Refractive errors can happen when the eyeball grows or reduces in length, when the cornea changes shape, or with age. It can be corrected with glasses, contact lenses or refractive surgery. Uncorrected refractive error can lead to vision impairment and blindness. The long-term impact can affect education, productivity, and quality of life.

Refractive errors may not be addressed for a variety of reasons, including lack of awareness by the individual or their family, children not realizing they aren’t seeing clearly, limited availability or affordability of refractive services including glasses and cultural stigmas that discourage the use of glasses. In Asia alone, a staggering 60% of children have a refractive error, it is also predicted that by 2050, half the world’s population will be myopic.

Vision and learning are closely related to each other. Globally, 448 million children and adolescents have refractive errors. They not only suffer poor vision but also face critical setbacks in development since 80% of learning is visual.

When children have difficulty in seeing clearly, be it the blackboard or their books, it hampers their ability to learn in the classroom with their peers. These children also run the risk of being labelled as poor performers, uninterested, and naughty for no real fault of theirs.

Refractive errors can be easily corrected with glasses or other refractive interventions. Treating Refractive Errors is cost-effective, has a significant impact on quality of life and in many cases can prevent the problem from advancing to severe impairment or blindness.

Orbis has worked with its partners to fight the problem of uncorrected refractive errors. In all our programmes around the world, we work to help adults and children get the help they need. We do this by:

• Screening of school-aged children and provide prescribed glasses and follow up care;
  Increase access to primary eye care especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas for screening and treatment;
• Improve public awareness and education about refractive errors and healthy vision;
• Provide training in optometry and techniques in screening;
• Provide equipment to improve service quality; and
• Advocate for policies that enhance eye health, such as covering prescription glasses by national insurance policy.

An example of how Orbis has had success with trying to treat refractive error is our innovative school eye health program, REACH (Refractive Error Among Children) which was launched in 2016. REACH aims to reduce visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive error among school-going children and provide a sustainable and scalable solution.

While we still use the REACH project in some of the countries we work in, we are delighted that since the REACH programme finished in Nepal in 2022, Nepal’s government has agreed to integrate eye health into school programmes across the country.

At Orbis we believe…

Every child has the right to an ear­ly, good qual­i­ty eye exam­i­na­tion, care and sup­port to ful­fil their fun­da­men­tal right to education.