CHILDHOOD BLINDNESS Blindness and cataract in children in developing countries order to increase the chances of finding 8th General Assembly of IAPB Developing programmes blind children. These methods include Course 2: Congenital and developmental examining children in anganwandis to control blindness and cataract (kindergartens), schools, vision centres, cataract in children Speakers: Paul Courtright, Parikshit Gogate, paediatric eye care centres, and during Kuldeep Dole, Mohammad Muhit, Khumbo Kalua, Visual impairment in children can have an special outreach initiatives such as Andrea Zin, Elizabeth Kishiki, Rohit C Khanna impact on their performance at school, as sarva siksha abhiyan (‘education for all’). well as their social interaction and devel- Session: Childhood blindness The ‘key informant’ method is another opment. Promoting eye health in children Speakers: Pablo Cibils, Mohammad Muhit, means of finding blind children. and ensuring early detection of visual Anna Rius, Deepti Bajaj, Marcela Frazier, impairment is an important part of general M Alamgir Hossain The key informant method eye health and child health strategies. This novel method of obtaining population- Since the launch of VISION 2020, Report by: based data on childhood blindness has various programmes have been developed Parikshit Gogate been piloted in Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, in resource-poor countries to control Head, Department of Paediatric Ophthal- 3,4,5,6 mology, Community Eye Care, HV Desai and Iran. blindness and cataract in children. Eye Hospital, Pune 411 028, India. A study in Bangladesh, in which over Speakers presented a selection of pilot or Email:
[email protected] 75,000 children were screened, compared established programmes in Latin America the key informant and the house-to-house and Asia.