What is Childhood Blindness?
Childhood blindness is a general term used to embrace all occurrences of blindness in children.
What Causes Childhood Blindness?
- A wide range of causes is responsible for childhood blindness.
- The main cause is xerophthalmia, an eye disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency that leads to softening and opacity of the eye lens and eventually to irreversible blindness.
- Other causes include: measles, rubella, congenital cataract, congenital glaucoma, and retinopathy of prematurity (a potentially blinding eye disorder that primarily affects premature infants).
What Cures Childhood Blindness?
As a variety of causes leads to childhood blindness, the treatments have to be chosen specifically for the respective disease.
Treatment:
Treatment:
- Xerophthalmia can be cured by administering vitamin A capsules to balance the deficiency before blindness occurs.
- Most important is the improvement of primary eye care for children to detect and cure treatable causes of blindness.
