256 chapter 30
PREVENTION of blindness
The best way to prevent blindness is to try to keep children well fed, clean, and healthy.
During pregnancy, mothers also need to eat enough nutritious foods and to avoid medicines
that might damage the baby. For more information, see a book like Helping Children Who
Are Blind or contact the groups on page 639.
In brief, steps to prevent child blindness include:
• When pregnant, keep away from persons with German measles and other infectious
diseases, avoid unsafe medicines, and try to get enough to eat.
• Protect the eyes of all newborn babies with erythromycin or tetracycline eye ointment
at birth (see p. 245).
• Vaccinate children against all the infectious diseases you can.
• Breast feed the baby, and continue to breast feed as long as possible.
• Good nutrition for mother and child—especially foods rich in vitamin A. Children often
get diarrhea and then ‘dry eyes’ after they are taken off the breast. So, when the baby
starts to eat other foods, give him mashed papaya, mashed cassava leaves, or other
foods with vitamin A, every day.
• Keep the home and child clean. Build and use latrines, and keep them covered. Try to
protect against flies. Wash hands with soap and water, especially before eating and
after using the latrine (toilet).
• Keep the child’s eyes clean. When they get infected or have pus, clean them often
with a clean cloth that is wet with clean water, and see a health worker.
• Give children with measles vitamin A rich foods (or vitamin A capsules, see p. 244)
because danger of ‘dry eyes’ increases with measles.
• Treat all persons with signs of trachoma early. For treatment of different eye problems,
see a health worker or get information from a book like Where There Is No Doctor.
• Keep sharp and pointed objects, bullets, explosives, acids, and lye away from children
and teach them about their dangers. Warn them about the danger of throwing closed
bottles, cans, or bullets into the fire. Also warn them about local plants that can injure
the eyes. (For example, the juice of ‘hiza’, a poisonous fig tree in Mexico, can burn the
eyes like lye.) Get good early treatment for any eye injury.
• Warn children about throwing rocks and sticks, or shooting slingshots toward other
persons.
• Check babies and children for early signs of eye problems or difficulty seeing. Test how
well they can see at 2 months of age and before they begin school.
• Organize children to test the sight of their younger brothers and
sisters (see CHILD-to-child, p. 452).
• Help everybody understand that most blindness in children can be
prevented. Teach people what they can do.
• For special precautions to protect the eyes of persons who have a loss of feeling in
their eyes, see Chapter 26 on Leprosy, p. 223.
Disabled village Children