ORIGINAL ARTICLESRefractive error study in children: results from Mechi Zone, Nepal☆
Section snippets
Methods
The entire Jhapa District, with 47 village development committees and three municipalities, was used as the sampling frame. Both village development committees and municipalities are divided into wards, which were used in creating sampling clusters. Using 1996 population projections from the 1991 national census, the population of each ward was estimated. Assuming that children 5 to 15 years of age represented 26% of the ward population, wards with fewer than 200 projected children were
Results
A total of 3,724 households were identifiedin the 25 clusters, 2,592 with one or more eligible children. Of those with children, 34% had one eligible child, 33% had two, 22% had three, and 11% had four or more eligible children. The largest household had seven eligible children. A total of 5,526 eligible children were enumerated (Table 1). The number of children per cluster ranged from 198 to 233.
The age distribution of enumerated females was not significantly different from a uniform
Discussion
This survey provides reliable evidence that the prevalence of reduced vision is very low in school-age children in the Jhapa District of Nepal: 2.9% of children had visual acuity 0.5 or worse in one or both eyes without correction. This compares with the 12.8% and 15.8% found in the China and Chile surveys, respectively.2, 3 In large measure, the difference is the result of a much lower prevalence of refractive error in Nepal. The prevalence of all uncorrectable causes of vision impairment was
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Foundation Eye Care Himalaya for providing logistical support and to Dr Sanjaya Singh for providing treatment for children referred to the Mechi Eye Center. The authors also acknowledge the clerical assistance of Jeanne King, National Eye Institute, in the preparation of this manuscript.
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This work was supported by the World Health Organization under the National Institutes of Health Contract N01-EY-2103.