School Eye Health Rapid Assessment 

We don’t know how many children worldwide have problems with their eyesight. The best estimates suggest that globally, almost 450 million children need glasses and around two million are blind. Short-sightedness (myopia) in children is also rapidly increasing in many parts of the world.

To learn effectively, children need to be able to see clearly. Children with poor eyesight in low- and middle-income countries are up to five times less likely to be in formal education.

To combat this, eye health providers across the world run school eye health programmes that find and treat children who need access to eye care. But they are hampered by the scarcity of reliable information about children’s eye health needs.

The School Eye Health Rapid Assessment (SEHRA) assesses the environment readiness for a school eye health programme and employs Peek software for data collection on the magnitude of the eye health need. Automated analyses provide reports to help plan, implement and monitor school eye health services. It was developed jointly with Peek Vision.

The tool aims to ensure that data is available on the eye health needs of school age children, so that they can be appropriately identified, diagnosed and services are available to treat them for eye conditions. This ensures they can learn and live their life to the full from an early age. It has been implemented in eight locations globally so far.

Find out more about SEHRA here: https://peekvision.org/solutions/rapid-assessments/

Publications

Morjaria, P., Massie, J., Bastawrous, A. et al. A School Eye Health Rapid Assessment (SEHRA) planning tool: Module to survey the magnitude and nature of local needs. BMC Public Health 22, 1665 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13927-x