The month of August is specially dedicated tochildren’s eye and safety, in other words, much emphasis will be laid onpreventing vision loss, eye injuries and the overall care of children’seyesight.

Statistics have shown that one out of 20 childrenwithin the age bracket of 3-5 has challenges with their vision.

If notresponded to at the nick of time could lead to vision loss permanently.

Despite these disturbing numbers, records also showthat 80 percent of preschoolers do not get their eye screened.

The purpose of this month’s campaign on children’s eyehealth isn’t just for the usual awareness.

As medical practitioners specializedin eye treatment, we use this time of the year to encourage parents to be moreobservant of their children’s eye health.

To avoid vision-threatening conditions, parents have ahuge role to play by ensuring regular eye examination as this would ensureearly detection and appropriate treatment.

Eye examination for children is extremely importantbecause changes in vision can take place with or without the knowledge of yourchildren.

Look at it this way, how do you expect toddlers who can’t even talk,express to you the challenges around their vision.

The purpose of driving the awareness for thischildren’s eye health and safety month is to ensure that parents own up to theresponsibility of taking their children’s vision health with the utmostpriority:

• Spreading the word from the point of information about theimportance of a health vision
• Knowing more on the early detection of visionchallenges in children
• Raising awareness on preventing eye injuries inchildren, especially sport-related eye injury
• Saving children’s eyesight as parents can be guidedon how to help their children in a vision challenge situation

So what can you actually do on children’s eye healthand safety awareness month?

With a whole month dedicated to gaining knowledgeabout your children’s eye health and safety, parents can immensely benefit inthis period as it concerns their child’s health and life.

Working on some of the stated objectives, you can playyour role by supporting the campaign on awareness concerning eye conditions inchildren and ways they can get prevented.

You can also support eye health and safety programsdesigned specifically for children.

One thing parents must note here is that children atthe age of 6 months should have an eyeexam and also again at age 3.

On resuming at school, eye examination must nowbe regular

Not forgetting that 80% of the learning process at thatage is visual, meaning that vision problem not attended to at that age leads topoor performances in school.