Navnoor Singh, Nitin Batra, Gurvinder Kaur, Rupali Chopra
BACKGROUND Early detection and treatment of eye diseases in children are necessary to meet the challenges of childhood blindness. Awareness of eye diseases is important in teachers because they are the first ones to identify symptoms in a child and report them to the parents. Lack of awareness in teachers regarding diseases can lead to visual impairment and ocular morbidity. Various teacher training programmes can be designed on the basis of the awareness present in teachers and they can be trained accordingly in identifying various symptoms of an eye disease and refer the child to an ophthalmologist in time. The aim of the study is to evaluate the awareness among school teachers regarding common eye diseases in rural and urban areas of Ludhiana, Punjab. MATERIALS AND METHODS This prospective study included 80 teachers from the age group of 18-55 years from 8 randomly selected rural and urban schools of Ludhiana district. These teachers were interviewed with a predesigned questionnaire consisting of 26 questions. Data was collected and analysed using SPSS software and results were obtained. RESULTS 96.3% (77/80) reported that they were aware of common eye diseases in children. 96.3% (77/80) teachers reported to be aware of refractive errors and allergic conjunctivitis. 81.3% (65/80) were aware of squint while 7.5% (6/80) were aware of amblyopia. However, the treatment options for these conditions were not fully clear among all the teachers. CONCLUSION Teachers were generally aware of symptoms of common eye diseases except amblyopia. To increase the awareness among teachers regarding common eye problems, more teacher training programmes need to be conducted so that children can be referred to an ophthalmologist by the teachers in time.
