Screening For Sight Defects

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31596, 6 February 1968, Page 3

Screening For Sight Defects

“Half of all blindness can be prevented” is the slogan of the Ohio State Society for Prevention of Blindness, a non-profit organisation 'which screens pre - school children for possible vision defects.

The screenings are not, strictly speaking, tests but a technique for detecting suspicious signs that all is not well with a child’s sight.

If a child is found to be using only one eye (amblyopia or lazy-eye blindness), for instance, he or she is sent to a specialist for a professional examination and treatment. z

The screening “tests” are made with cards, on which a large letter E is set in different positions to determine a child's acuity of vision. Voluntary Workers

The Ohio society’s executive director is Mrs Edith Harter, who has one paid, assistant and a support force of hundreds of trained volun-

teer workers throughout the State. The work is financed by voluntary contributions from individuals and business sources. The society's programmes include educating employers and employees on the necessity of wearing safety glasses in hazardous occupations, the mass screening of adults for the first symptoms of glaucoma, as well as screening

young children. Its public relations and public education work includes the distribution of some 150,000 booklets and other printed material a year, as well as maintaining a speakers’ bureau and a lending library of education films. The Ohio organisation is one of 22 affiliates of the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness, which was founded in 1908 and is one of the oldest voluntary health agencies in the United States engaged in a comprehensive programme of re-

search, service and education. A Wise Owl Club, composed of workers whose sight was saved by protective glasses, was formed by the club and has about 2800 members in Ohio. “The savings in industrial compensation to workers who might have been blinded runs into several million dollars in Ohio alone, to say nothing of the human misery prevented,” says Mrs Harter.

A Junior Wise Owl Club for boys and girls, whose sight was saved by proper protection at the time of an accident, has also been formed. In 1963 the Ohio State Society for the Prevention of Blindness took the lead in getting State legislation passed to require eye protection for students in chemistry laboratories and in vocational and industrial education shops. Twenty-two States have followed the lead.—United States Information Service.