13 percent school children myopic in India: AIIMS

NEW DELHI, March 12: Over 13 percent of the schoolgoing children in India have turned myopic, an AIIMS study has revealed, adding that the number has doubled in the last decade due to excess usage of electronic gadgets.

According to the Rajendra Prasad Center for Opthalmic Sciences at AIIMS, the statistics for the disorder a decade ago was only 7 percent. Among the other tions which follow the increase in the problem among its children are Chi, Singapore and Thailand. Myopia, also known as near-sightedness and short-sightedness, is a condition of the eye where the light that comes in does not directly focus on the reti but in front of it, causing the image that one sees when looking at a distant object to be out of focus. It does not affect focus when looking at a close object.

“Very less studies have been done in India on the eye related problems and the myopia one is one of them. We are also conducting a tiol survey to find out the other eye related problems among the children,” said Atul Kumar, head of the RP center, the apex eye center of India. (IANS)