Making eye care count: How women optometrists are screening school boys for Color Vision Deficiency

People who have a color vision deficiency have difficulty seeing some colors or see them differently from other people. Color vision deficiency is often inherited and affects more males than females.

People who have a color vision deficiency have difficulty seeing some colors or see them differently from other people. Color vision deficiency is often inherited and affects more males than females.

When we say universal eye health, we say we provide our services to all. Orbis works in various parts of the world saving sight, providing crucial trainings and ensuring no one is left behind. In India, we focus on childhood blindness.

Although, our mission statement says that we aim to transform lives through the prevention and treatment of blindness, Color Vision Deficiency (CVD), by the very nature of the condition has no treatment or preventive measures. Why, then, should we be concerned with identifying color vision deficient children?

Reach and Color Vision Deficiency

Through Orbis’s unique school eye health program called Refractive Error Among Children (REACH), our partner hospitals screened over 4 million children in three years. It is while implementing this model that we realized the importance of capturing high level data to shape our strategies for reaching out to the community in the future. With technology, we brought together a mechanism which would help track the journey of a child outside the circle of care to within the circle of care and beyond.

One of the data points for us was the prevalence of Color Vision Deficiency among children in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Orbis partner hospital and a center of excellence, Sankara Nethralaya, brought together an efficient team of professionals from Elite School of Optometry to manage the school screening program under REACH.

Color Vision Deficiency and the Power Team at Sankara Nethralaya

In the early days of screening on-site, key players in field level eye screening would not undertake CVD screening among a few other eye conditions. To be able to screen and cover the entire community, only a few key conditions were prioritized for screening. But over the years, the screening process has evolved from just community screening to children specific screening such as REACH.

As established earlier, Color Vision Deficiency is prevalent among boys more than girls. Interestingly, it is the driven QCV-REACH team comprising of women at Orbis partner hospital, Sankara Nethralaya, who put in the additional effort to screen male children for CVD in South India.

The power team at Sankara Nethralaya, led by Dr Anuradha Narayanan, Principal-Elite School of Optometry and Clinical Director-Special Olympics, is the only one that has proactively conducted color vision deficiency screening among the Orbis-REACH partners. Although deemed a time-consuming process but they feel it is worth it.

Broadening the Scope of Eye Care

Career counselling and referral for further examination are crucial to children with Color Vision Deficiency. Let us look at how identifying a young child with CVD can help him shape his future.

If neglected, a child with dreams and aspirations to become, say, a pilot will only realize his dream not fructifying while he applies for training for the job. The emotional impact of the same cannot be measured. There are several professions that require the color vision deficiency test but they come up at a stage when one has already made up their mind on what they want to be in life. Instead of it being jumped on them as a surprise, the responsibility, then, falls on us-the service providers to bring positive impact through mere screening to inform a child’s parents about his possible career opportunities once he is identified with CVD. Can you imagine the amount of emotional distress we would have saved every child we identify with CVD?

We often talk about broadening our scope of care and this is a perfect example of the care we extend to the children. It was the endeavor of Dr Anuradha and her team of optometrists to ensure that they identify such children and help them shape their dreams in a more informed way.

Meet Dr Anuradha Narayanan

Dr Anuradha Narayanan, Principal-Elite School of Optometry and Clinical Director-Special Olympics took on QCV REACH in 2016 as Outreach Coordinator, Orbis REACH Project.

Dr Anuradha Narayanan

Principal-Elite School of Optometry and Clinical Director-Special Olympics

After col­lege, I want­ed to join the health­care pro­fes­sion and serve patients; Optom­e­try as a pro­fes­sion was not known to that many peo­ple at the time. I got to know about the pro­fes­sion from a friend, applied and got into a pre­mier insti­tu­tion, Elite School of Optom­e­try (ESO) in 1994. In four years, I real­ized it was an apt­ly cho­sen pro­fes­sion and I was very hap­py to have com­plet­ed the course.

Over the years, Dr Anuradha continued her journey from clinical services to becoming a prominent faculty member at ESO. In 2010, the school gave her the opportunity to manage the daunting task of school eye health. Although not a designated role, Dr Anuradha, as a faculty member, of ESO decided to take on the role. “I liked this work…going and seeing children, helping them to overcome their ocular conditions and from then onwards, I contributed to this (REACH) project also.”

Over the years, Dr Anuradha continued her journey from clinical services to becoming a prominent faculty member at ESO. In 2010, the school gave her the opportunity to manage the daunting task of school eye health. Although not a designated role, Dr Anuradha, as a faculty member, of ESO decided to take on the role. “I liked this work…going and seeing children, helping them to overcome their ocular conditions and from then onwards, I contributed to this (REACH) project also.”

The academician in her spoke to the wasteful usage of paper to document and consolidate the large information they were gathering during the school screenings prior to REACH. “Though there are large scale community interventions in our country, the learning and consolidation has not come as desired which is cause for worry. So, the measures we took to consolidate data on excel sheets initially helped collect evidence which we in turn can give back to the country to learn from it. Even now, I pursue collection of data and instruct my team to be cautious while handling it. I insist to my team that after every community outreach I want five things of which data is the topmost.”

Through REACH, the data collection became even smoother and it immensely helped Dr Anuradha and her team of optometrists.

She goes on to take pride in how far they have come from then to now, “In the past decade, I have seen many other hospitals take up school screening with the need to replicate our model. We began testing for binocular vision anomalies and color vision deficiency some five years back, 2016, to be precise, which is also when we started our REACH project.”

THIS BLOG IS A FIRST IN A THREE-PART SERIES.

STAY TUNED FOR OUR BLOG ON THE POWER TEAM OF WOMEN OPTOMETRISTS NEXT !

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