EC Ophthalmology

Background: Visual impairment is a major health issue that imposes a great burden to all nations globally. Ethiopia is one of the developing countries in Africa, with poor health service coverage especially eye health care and is believed to have one of the world’s highest rates of blindness.

Objective of the Study: To assess prevalence of visual impairment and associated factors among high school students of Assosa zone, South West Ethiopia.

Materials and Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study design was used to assess prevalence of visual impairment and its associated factors among high school students of Assosa zone, South West Ethiopia using multi stage sampling. Data was fed into Epidata 4.4.2.win 64 and exported to SPSS version 20. Binary Logistic Regression (bivariate and multivariate analysis with backward LR) was used to identify the associated factors to visual impairment. Data expressed in percentage, mean, ± SD and P-value ≤ 0.05 considered as a statistically significant. Data presented with text, tables.

Results: In the present study, response rate was 97.6%. Among 492 randomly selected high school students, 249 (50.6) were females. The mean age was 17.27 (SD ± 1.14) with minimum and maximum age of 14 and 31, respectively. Majority of participants 453 (92.1%) were urban residents. In this cross- sectional study, the prevalence of visual impairment accounts for 10.4%.

Conclusion: School type, spending on cell phone, duration of reading books, not participating in sport and no history of seeking eye were factors associated with visual impairment.

Keywords: Visual Impairment; Assosa Zone; South West Ethiopia

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