What is the leading cause of blindness in children in developing countries?
In developing countries, 30% to 72% of such blindness is avoidable, 9% to 58% is preventable, and 14% to 31% is treatable. The leading cause is corneal opacification caused by a combination of measles, xerophthalmia, and the use of traditional eye medicine.
What causes blindness in developing countries?
For example, in low-income countries congenital cataract is a leading cause, whereas in middle-income countries it is more likely to be retinopathy of prematurity. As in adult populations, uncorrected refractive error remains a leading cause of vision impairment in all countries amongst children.
What causes blindness in poor countries?
Causes of Blindness Blindness is most prevalent in low to middle income countries where malnutrition, inadequate health and education services, poor water quality, and a lack of sanitation lead to a high incidence of eye disease. Fully 90 percent of the world’s visually impaired live in low-income settings.
What is the biggest issue that blind children face in language development?
There are language problems that are common among children with visual impairments. They are verbalism, echolalia, difficulty with pronouns and frequent questioning. It is common for a student to talk about people, objects, and events without having an understanding of the concepts.
Why do so many children in Africa go blind?
Up to half a million children go blind every year due to vitamin A deficiency. “One of the biggest challenges we have on the continent is a lack of vitamin A. A lot of people, especially poor people, don’t have access to the necessary nutrients.
What is the most common cause of childhood blindness?
Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children. Our eyes needs vitamin A for several purposes, including to nourish and protect the cornea, which is the clear covering on the front of the eye. Without it, the cornea is vulnerable to injury and scarring which can lead to blindness.
How does visual impairment affect child development?
They lack visual references and have reduced integration of information from their parents. More recent studies have found that the language of visually impaired children is more self-oriented and that the word meanings are more limited than for normally sighted children (Anderson et al 1984).
What is the leading cause of blindness worldwide?
Cataract. Cataract is a clouding of the eye’s lens and is the leading cause of blindness worldwide, and the leading cause of vision loss in the United States. Cataracts can occur at any age because of a variety of causes, and can be present at birth.
How many blind people are in poverty?
There were important regional differences in poverty among blind adults. Almost one in four (24 percent) of blind adults in the South lives in poverty, compared with fewer than one in five in the Northeast (18 percent), Midwest (19 percent), and West (13 percent).
What percentage of blindness is avoidable?
There is good news: an astonishing 90 percent of blindness can be prevented or cured. This is what is known as “avoidable blindness.” With your generous support, we can end avoidable blindness!
How does blindness affect a child’s development?
Severely visually impaired children have to rely on sequential observation. They can see or touch only part of an object and from this limited information build up an image of components. Awareness of relationships between objects occurs later, and initially connections between sounds and objects are not often made.
Where are most children with visual impairments educated?
Although special schools for the blind do exist, many children who are blind or visually impaired in the United States now attend public schools alongside their sighted peers. Still, there are children that might benefit best from attending specialized schools for part or all of their education.