Prevalence of refractive errors among the school-going children in East Sikkim

Vision plays an important role in child's development for learning and communication. Uncorrected refractive error (URE) has become a major challenge to health care policy makers especially in school going children. We aim to report the prevalence of refractive error among the school students of the east district of Sikkim, India.

A cross-sectional study was carried out among 15,954 school children under school health program of national program for control of blindness. The screening was conducted in 40 schools of east district which included primary, higher secondary, monastic and private schools.

The prevalence of refractive error was 6.7% among which myopia was the most common error present in 335 (31.1%) children, followed by astigmatism in 317 (29.4%) and the remaining 29 (2.6%) with hyperopia. The age group between 14-17 years had high prevalence of refractive error (9.2%). Females had slightly higher refractive error (6.93%) than males (5.9 %). Most backward classes were found to be highest suffering from refractive error (26.65%) and the least seen was found in schedule tribe (11.6%).

The study provides a useful and baseline data about the refractive error amongst the school children of east Sikkim. A larger study needs to be conducted in all the schools of the state to get a clearer picture of RE and other eye related diseases to detect vision problem as early as possible.