The new version of the visual health examination for children, launched yesterday by the Regional Health Service, in the municipality of Funchal, will cover 1,959 children in the region.
This initiative is a population-based amblyopia screening, carried out by specialized technicians, which will allow the timely and widespread identification of refractive error and amblyopia cases in the region, as well as enable timely diagnosis and treatment.
“We are tracking about two thousand children in the Autonomous Community of Madeira, to prevent future infections. We cover all the municipalities, at the moment we are in Funchal and then we go to Santa Cruz, Machico, until we end up in Cámara de Lobos, Regional Secretary of Health and Protection,” explained Camara de Lobos, Regional Secretary of Health and Protection. Civilian, Pedro Ramos, during a visit to the Bom Jesus Health Center, where the initiative is taking place, which targets children who have reached or will reach four years of age during the year 2024 and are not followed up in the hospital and do not wear glasses.
“Once this disease is detected and corrected early, children do well and their eyes develop in the same way and do not need problems in the future. If we do not do this, the so-called “lazy eye” may persist and become lazier, and then the vision becomes blurred and there is a difference between the eyes.” .
According to the official, this is a preventive measure “another in which Madeira demonstrates that it is following the recommendations of the World Health Organization on the promotion and protection of health and the prevention of diseases.”
Regarding the first edition of the children's visual health examination, which was held last year, ophthalmologist Marta Macedo indicated that it was a “good year”, in which 76% of the children proposed for examination participated. “We were able to see that we had not a very high number of false negatives, and we were able to identify children who would not have been diagnosed otherwise,” he said, explaining that since strabismus is an asymptomatic disease, screening for it was crucial to identifying children who They do not show symptoms. “This disease, which is a serious problem with poor eyesight, does not show signs and parents do not notice it. However, there are children who see 20, 30 or 40%, and with examination they reached us quickly and effectively,” he concluded.
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