Ministry of Health Enhances Early Detection Efforts for Childhood Eye Conditions

The Ministry of Health is pushing to ensure that no child receives their eye disease or eye allergy diagnosis too late.

That’s why Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George is encouraging parents to take advantage of the screening programme.

He gave that encouragement yesterday at the Ministry of Education, Elsie Payne Complex, Constitution Road, where they were presented with four vision acuity charts.

“Screening is usually a low-cost intervention that has high outputs, and we hope that this will redound to children not being diagnosed too late with respect to refractory eye disease, squint, or eye allergies.

“The Ministry of Health is really happy with this kind of donation. We will use it to the best of our ability to make sure that they are kept safe and that it is used to support thousands of children in the country,” George said.

The donation which was valued at $28 000, followed the revitalisation and expansion of the screening programme, last year.

“In 2023, the National Eye Care Committee was revitalised and re-energised under the leadership of Dr Ingrid Cumberbatch who is our chair. Their purpose was to identify strategies to combat eye disease through the life course of those young, middleaged, and elderly.

“That committee is very active at the moment and consists of persons from the private sector, primary care, and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, we have also relationships with The University of West Indies and paediatricians.

Small pilot

They are also looking at tertiary care improvement, rehabilitative care, human resource development, access to equipment and supplies, and the promotion of research and the embracing of technologies which affect eye disease,” George said.

He also said they introduced screening for ten to 12-year-olds, persons entering school.

“Information from a small pilot indicated that as many as 20 per cent of those children had some form of refractory error or eye allergy. The committee continued its work, and now we are extending the programme to the age group three to five-year-olds, where we will have screening using the visual acuity monitors.

“Fortunately more polyclinics have come on board. We have Branford Taitt Polyclinic, the Randall Phillips Polyclinic, and the Eunice Gibson Polyclinic who joined Winston Scott Polyclinic in making sure that young children are screened early for eye disease,” he added.

Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer Bradshaw, chair of the National Eye Care committee Cumberbatch, as well as paediatric phthalmologist David Callender who did a demonstration attended the handing over event.

Archer-Bradshaw said that the assessment was one of the strategic goals of education transformation.

She said they aimed to ensure that every student sitting in a classroom can take full advantage of the education while they are at school, whether it is at the nursery, primary or secondary levels.

To achieve this outcome, she said they we have to be purposeful in removing the barriers that can prevent our children from learning.

Parental permission

She recalled the pilot inter-ministerial eye screening collaboration which occurred in October 2023.

“First-formers in secondary schools were identified as the target group on the recommendation of the national eye care committee as this group, that is the 1112 year old age group, would normally visit health care facilities to receive the inoculations required. The Ministry of Education facilitated the transportation of more than 1 500 students and their teachers to four different polyclinics to facilitate the student check of eyes and of course, this was done with parental permission. We selected to transport the children because we needed to ensure that the polyclinics could test the systems, these are the screening systems, with the large volume of children visiting the clinics,” she said.

They were able to screen 64 per cent of the first-formers across secondary schools.

She added that parents have the opportunity to take their children to polyclinics themselves to have the screening done.

She said however that the parents had to give their consent to the assessments. “It is important for me to state that the Ministry of Education does not conduct any screening programme without the written consent of the parents and guardians of the children. Whether it is vision screening, hearing screening, or psychological assessments, parental consent is a requirement,” she added. (TG)