Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Feb;68(2):311-315.
doi: 10.4103/ijo.IJO_2076_18.

Prevalence and causes of childhood blindness in India: A systematic review

Meenakshi Wadhwani  1 , Praveen Vashist  1 , Suraj Senjam Singh  1 , Vivek Gupta  1 , Noopur Gupta  1 , Rohit Saxena  1
Affiliations

Prevalence and causes of childhood blindness in India: A systematic review

Meenakshi Wadhwani et al. Indian J Ophthalmol. 2020 Feb.

Abstract

Childhood blindness is one of the priority targets of Vision 2020-Right To Sight due to its impact on the psychological and social growth of the child. An extensive search was performed to locate research papers on childhood blindness prevalence and its causes in the community based and blind schools, respectively, conducted from 1990 onward up to the present. Cross references were also manually searched along with expert consultation to enlarge the reference data. A total of five community-based studies on the prevalence including two refractive error studies conducted all over India in children less than 16 years were found. The causes of childhood blindness from the available blind school studies revealed that causes of childhood blindness have mainly shifted from corneal causes to whole globe abnormalities. This article highlights that though with the availability of proper healthcare facilities, the trend is changing for the causes but still a lot of effort in the form of timely neonatal eye care facilities, pediatric surgical services and proper refraction strategies is required.

Keywords: Childhood blindness; ocular morbidity; prevalence; visual impairment.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

None

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Summary of the review strategy-Flow diagram
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Dandona R, Dandona L, Srinivas M, Sahare P. Refractive error in children in an rural population in India. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2002;43:615–22. - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization. Cummulative official updates to ICD–Feb 2009. [Last accessed 2015 Jul]. Available from: http://www.Who.int/clasificationd/icd/Official updates Combined 1996-200... .
    1. Murthy GVS. Magnitude and temporal trends in avoidable blindness in Children (ABC) in India. Indian J Pediatr. 2017;84:924–9. - PubMed
    1. Dandona L, Williams JD, Williams BC, Rao GN. Population based assessment of childhood blindness in Southern India. Arch Ophthalmol. 1998;116:545–6. - PubMed
    1. Dandona R, Dandona L. Childhood blindness in India: A population based perspective. Br J Ophthalmol. 2003;87:263–5. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types