Keeping an eye on children’s vision

Tan performing eye checks for pupils of SJK(C) Chin Woo in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur.

It is vital for parents to send their children for early eye check-up, an orthoptist said during a free eye screening session for SJK(C) Chin Woo pupils in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur.

Optimax Eye Specialist Centre orthoptist Tan Sweet Wei said this is because during children’s formative years, the eye is at a developing stage and it is easier to seek treatment.

“Also, children are not aware of what is normal and abnormal. Any abnormality will be treated as normal as they would assume that everybody ‘sees’ the same things,” she said, adding that the normal visual development was rapid during the first six months of life and continued through the first decade.

Children, she said, would have higher risk of wearing glasses if both their parents wore spectacles.

She said a thorough eye check-up would reveal any potential visual impairment and could be treated earlier.

The Segamat Paediatric Eye Disease Study, conducted in 2016 and led by the Health Ministry and South-East Asia Community Observatory under Monash University Malaysia, found that one in 10 children in Malaysia had an undiagnosed vision problem that could lead to chronic headaches and learning difficulties.

The study also found that if left untreated, it could lead to permanent visual impairment and even blindness.

One of the prevalent impairment that children face is the amblyopia or commonly known as lazy eye.

Some of the symptoms include difficulty seeing the whiteboard which also leads to teachers’ complaint about the child being inattentive in class and avoidance of doing tasks where they are required to look at near distance objects such as doing school work.

Tan said lazy eyes occurred when the vision of one eye was reduced because it failed to work properly with the brain.

“The brain and the eyes work together to produce vision where the eye focuses light on the back part of the eye known as the retina. Cells of the retina then trigger nerve signals that travel along the optic nerves to the brain. But due to several causes, such as uncorrected refractive errors, the vision of one eye is reduced because it fails to work properly with the brain. The eye itself looks normal, but the brain favours the other eye,” she said.

“When detected early, amblyopia and many other childhood vision abnormalities are treatable. Treatment efficiency declined with age, with the most pronounced effects before the age of seven years.”

Some of the treatments include correcting detectable refractive errors or eye conditions and subsequently applying a patch to the better eye.

“Patching stimulates vision in the weaker eye,” she said.

More than 100 pupils aged seven to 12, benefited from the eye screening that day. Also present was brand ambassador Angeline Wong, a singer known to the local Chinese community.

Programme coordinator and optometrist Nicole Law added that some of the students who were screened required further follow-up consultations.

“We are glad that we are able to create awareness among these students. It is part of the company’s philosophy to help the community,” said Law.