South Africa
Children urged to play outside more to reduce risk of short-sightedness─── ZENANDE MPAME 12:37 Fri, 23 May 2025
Encouraging daily outdoor time for children is recommended to prevent the onset of myopia, also known as short-sightedness or near-sightedness.
Myopia Awareness Week is celebrated till Sunday (25/5) under the theme, “Screens Down, Eyes Up”, and it highlights the changes people must make in their lifestyles to keep a healthy sight.
Myopia, also known as near-sightedness, is a vision condition where distant objects appear blurry, while near objects are seen clearly. Eyeball elongation is frequently the main cause of it, as it causes light to focus incorrectly on the retina, or the back of the eye.
“Evidence shows that the chances of a child becoming myopic are reduced by approximately 30% if they spend more than 14 hours a week outdoors,” said South African Society for Paediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus president Dr Helga Abrahamse-Pillay.
“Myopia often develops and presents during childhood and may worsen up to the age of about 20, yet it could also first develop in adulthood. If one or both parents are near-sighted, there is an increased chance their children will be near-sighted.”
It is highly recommended that any child identified as having difficulty seeing the board at school or television at home see a professional as soon as possible, she said.
Signs of near-sightedness include:
• holding books close to the face to read;
• sitting very close to the TV;
• rubbing the eyes;
• squinting or straining to read the board or presentations at school;
• disinterest in teaching, often diagnosed as behavioural issues; and
• fear or hesitancy to participate in sports.
Contact lenses or spectacles that assist in properly refocusing light beams onto the retina can be used to treat myopia. The cornea can also be reshaped by refractive surgery, like LASIK, to improve vision.
“Individuals who spend considerable time reading, working at a computer, playing video games, and have astigmatism, especially when there is an underlying genetic risk, are more likely to develop Myopia,” said Abrahamse-Pillay.
Around 2,6 billion people were short-sighted in 2020, according to the World Health Organisation, which anticipates that this figure will rise to 3,4 billion by 2030.
