Most learners in Kiambu County are performing dismally owing to poor eyesight in the classroom, a challenge that has made the teaching space stressful and frustrating for many.
Eye experts and education stakeholders say that uncorrected vision problems are to blame for poor academics among learners in the county.
Worse still is that most learners take years to detect their eye challenges while most parents think if there is something wrong with their children’s eyes, the child will automatically report to them or a paediatrician will detect and offer immediate treatment.
According to Elizabeth Gathoni, a teacher at New Life Academy in Ruiru, the poor vision among many learners has been directly impacting their ability to learn as 80% of learning is visual and happens through the eyes.
Most learners, Gathoni said, struggle to even jot simple scripts on paper, leave alone read what their teachers write on the blackboard.
To add salt to the wound, the teacher regretted that most of the affected learners end up suffering low esteem and psychological challenges as they perceive themselves as inferior compared to others, a situation that often affects their academic performance.
“It is usually an uphill task for us to handle the learners who cannot read or write simply because they have eye complications. Sometimes teachers think such children are slow learners only to realize that their unhealthy eyes are to blame for their sluggishness in classrooms,” Gathoni noted.
Speaking during a teacher’s sensitization forum before the rollout of free eye screening services in all the 1,360, an exercise that targets 443,000 learners, Kiambu County Director in charge of Public Health Teresia Wanjiru noted that most learners live unhealthy lives while a few realize they have a problem do not visit hospitals due to poverty and for fear of cost implications.
Wanjiru revealed that the local government, under a program that the county administration is pursuing in collaboration with Kikuyu Hospital and Christian Blind Mission (CBM), a leading organization in disability-inclusive development, school-going children will be able to know their eye status and or receive necessary medications to facilitate their smooth studies.
“We are happy to have rolled out this program to our schools where we believe there is a gap. Poor vision among learners has been informing poor performance and to turn this around, every student needs to know their eye status,” Wanjiru stated.
According to Stella Waithera, the program manager, most of the affected learners complain of discomfort and fatigue, frequent eye rubbing and blinking, short attention span, constant squinting when reading, headaches, covering one eye, tilting head forward when looking at distant objects among other observations.
“A situation analysis was done and there was a gap in the early identification of learners having eye challenges. We decided to take this right into schools where most learners spend most of their time in schools where besides screening, we will be treating the challenges we are able to handle and referring others to our hospitals for specialized treatment,” Waithera remarked.
