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The Grey Bruce Health Unit is partnering with District A-9 of Lions Club International to provide free, in-school vision screenings for senior kindergarten students at Bluewater District School Board and Bruce Grey Catholic District School Board schools. The plan is to offer the vision screenings at Bruce Grey Catholic District schools in November and Bluewater District schools in the spring. The screenings will take place during the school day, onducted by trained Lions Club volunteers and overseen by Public Health and consisting of three simple, non-invasive tests, designed to help identify the most common vision impairments in young children. 

These include Amblyopia (sometimes called lazy eye), Reduced Stereopsis (inability to recognize depth), Strabismus (more commonly known as eye turn), and Refractive Vision Disorder (such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism).

“We know that undiagnosed and untreated vision problems can impact students and student learning in significant ways. Early identification and treatment of vision conditions that can have few or no visible symptoms can play a big role in healthy childhood development,” says Chimere Okoronkwo, Senior Public Health Manager at the Grey Bruce Health Unit.

About 80 per cent of what a child learns in school is information that is presented visually, according to the Canadian Association of Optometrists. However, vision problems may go undetected in early childhood because children cannot always recognize that they have vision problems.

Parents and guardians will receive letters, with clinic dates and other information, from their child’s school prior to the start of the in-school vision screenings which are not meant to replace annual comprehensive eye exams with an optometrist and are not designed to detect all vision problems.

The Canadian Association of Optometrists recommends that children undergo at least one eye examination between the ages of two and five and that children aged five to 19 receive an eye exam annually. In Ontario, yearly eye exams are covered by OHIP until a person turns 20 years old.

Starting July 1, 2022, the Eye See…Eye Learn® program is also available to children born in 2017 and 2018 that are in any junior or senior kindergarten program. To participate in the program the eye exam must be with a participating optometrist.

If required, Eye See…Eye Learn® will provide one pair of glasses per child courtesy of our participating optometrists and corporate partners Essilor Vision Foundation Canada and Modern Optical Canada. The frames are fashionable and are made with high quality and impact-resistant polycarbonate lenses. The estimated value of the glasses is over $300.

For more information, send an email to: [email protected].

source: media release

 

 

 

 

 

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