Protecting Vision & Minds: A Seal For The Future - Dr Sukriti Chauhan & Ms Anagha Ratheesh

Imagine you are sitting in a classroom; a very common scenario that comes to mind is a student struggling to look at the blackboard when seated at the back bench. They keep rubbing their eyes and peeking into their peer’s notebook so that they do not miss anything important.

The human eye is one of the seven vital sensory organs we have, and the impact it has on the lives of every individual is significant. It acts as the medium through which our entire life revolves, starting from seeing what is around us, to reading, writing, or any kind of activity before going to sleep.

The problem of vision can make students lag in their daily activities, especially in schools where they find it difficult to grasp things, also leading to mockery by  classmates and sometimes teachers labelling the students as ‘slow’. Lack of vision is not just a physical health issue, but it comes with the social cost the student needs  to pay before getting diagnosed.

There is a huge impact on students, including falling behind, disengagement, and  avoidance of class participation. The serious concern one can see here is that parents  are not taking this seriously and are dismissing it as laziness or lack of interest, with no urgency to act, sometimes intensifying the child's isolation at home too.

During my first school visit, the most striking discussion I found was the stigma of  wearing spectacles, especially among the girl students. Students mock each other for  wearing specs, and there is no serious supervision, with nobody watching closely  enough to connect the dots of what exactly is happening.

Students don't tend to realise that there is a real problem with seeing clearly, and they have no benchmark for normal vision, so they never report it to anybody; this is the space where awareness needs to come into play. Teachers often tend to misread this as inattentiveness or low intelligence, when it's actually a vision problem sitting untreated. Lack of vision constitutes a problem that is invisible and goes  unnoticed.

Understanding the intensity of the issue, ETI stepped in and launched its School Eye Health Project in 2023 in partnership with Sun Pharma and the Directorate of  Education (GNCTD) under the leadership of Dr Virander Singh Chauhan & Dr  Vibha Singh Chauhan. The project is conducted across government schools in Delhi  for students in classes 6-12. Here, there is a proper intervention happening that involves first giving awareness sessions, screening through the Snellen chart, then  consultation with the optometrist, and later free spectacle distribution. In just three  years, ETI has reached 81 schools in Delhi and screened close to 1 lakh students and distributed free spectacles to 8000 plus students. The vision problem is brought into the mainstream dialogue and shows how proper intervention can reach the beneficiaries and create an impact.

In India, eyes have also been made into the discussion of beauty standards, and often  in movies, a male or female character with specs is often considered below the beauty standards, which often impacts children about how they feel about wearing specs. The ETI team keeps this in mind as an important element by providing a proper ten-minute orientation, which included how eyes need to be kept clean, what are the  foods to have, and also trying to eliminate the stigma around wearing specs. Here, the classroom turns into a screening space, starting with the Snellen chart test, which  is the filtering stage- quick, efficient, simple, and conducted for every child. Children  flagged in the first stage are taken to optometrists for detailed diagnostic testing. The spectacle distribution process primarily starts one-two weeks post the screening. Parents are then brought into the loop for a feedback mechanism and are involved  in the outcome process.

Even though the primary impact of the project is the correction of vision among school students, it also has another layer to it, which includes the impact on the mental well-being of the students. Getting access to eye checkups and wearing spectacles can build confidence and self-esteem in students, which will impact their overall development and growth. Wearing spectacles is not a stigma and is an important aspect that should be normalized starting from schools and homes.

This project serves a great cause for many students and helps in the correction of their vision. Clear vision enables the students to dream and experience all the minute  joys. Now the students cannot just see the blackboard but also a bright future clearly. This initiative by ETI Foundation serves as a reminder of how essential sight is and the importance of bringing this issue into mainstream discussion.

The above information is the author's own; Outlook India is not involved in the creation of this article.