UGANDA | HEALTH | SUNGLASSES

As smart as it may be to wear sunglasses, doctors advise that it is not good to put on sunglasses or shades for more than three hours a day.

It strains the eyes, and you may get a headache and have tears flowing out of your eyes. But there are those like John Mukwaya and Isabellah Nishacah.

Opticians (doctors who treat eyes) say 80% of children are born with eye defects. But by the time many of them are 25 years old, they get better on their own.

John Mukwaya is a primary seven pupil at Ladybird day and boarding primary school, Matugga, in Wakiso district.

He says a year ago he used to have headaches while reading, especially when working on the blackboard.

His optician found out that he was longsighted and gave him spectacles. He told him that with time, his eyes would get better and he would not need the spectacles.

He only puts them on when reading and watching television. Some eye problems cannot be cured. But minor problems of the eye can worsen if not treated early.

Doctors say that parents should ensure that their children go for eye exams once a year until they are 25 years old.

They say that it is at this age that the eyes of a human being mature. In some schools, head teachers recommend that pupils have their eyes checked before they report back to school after the holidays.

Do you have your eyes checked?

Some children, when watching television, sit very close to the television or play computer games with their eyes very close to the screen for a long time.

This is bad because it strains the eyes. Doctors recommend that children watch TV for three hours a day.

According to Dr. Edwin Tamale, an ophthalmologist expert in Kampala, many parents choose not to seek medical attention.

He says early detection of eye problems that are treatable during infancy and childhood is very important for vision and the general health of a child.

"Vision tests in children can help detect significant eye problems, including the misalignment of the eyes and poor vision in one or both eyes." "Eye screening can be done as early as when a child is in nursery school, and eye health can be assessed throughout childhood, so you should go ahead and take your baby to a specialist," he says.

However, formal eye exams should be done between the ages of three and four. If your child has an eye problem, an ophthalmologist should be able to give him/her a full eye examination

Doctors also say children should not stay indoors for a long time because their eyes relax when they are outdoors in normal sunlight.

Isabellah Nishacah, who is also in primary seven at the same school, lived with vision difficulties in primary four. Because of blurred vision, the 13-year-old experienced hardships while at school.

She constantly sought advice from her colleagues, who did nothing more than attribute her poor vision to the long school hours.

Such conclusions kept her going until she discovered that at Mengo hospital.

The World Health Organization estimates that 39 million people worldwide are blind, while 246 million people live with moderate or severe visual impairments.

Two-thirds of blind children die within two years following the loss of their eyesight, and 80 percent of blindness cases can be treated or prevented.

Children below the age of 15

An estimated 19 million children are visually impaired. Of these, 12 million children are visually impaired due to refractive errors, a condition that could be easily diagnosed and corrected. 1.4 million people are irreversibly blind for the rest of their lives and need visual rehabilitation interventions for full psychological and personal development.