Prevalence of Refractive Errors in School Children (12-17 Years) of Tafila City

Objective: To study the prevalence of refractive errors in school children (12-17 years) of Tafila city by age, sex, class and type. Study design: Cross-sectional study in schools of Tafila city conducted from September 2004 to March 2005 for 1,647 school children which included 828 males and 819 females analyzed by Chi square test, proportions. Results: 25.32 % of the students were found to be having refractive errors. Of these 47 % were females and 53 % were males. The distribution of refractive errors was: Myopia- 63.5%, Hypermetropia 11.2% and astigmatism 20.4%. Conclusions: These data support the assumption that vision screening of school children in developing countries could be useful in detecting correctable causes of decreased vision especially refractive errors and in minimizing long term visual disability