Prevalence of color blindness among school children in three primary schools of Gish –Abay town district, Amhara regional state, north-west Ethiopia

Abstract

BackgroundAlthough there are limited studies, recent data are lacking to accurately determine the magnitude of color blindness in Ethiopia and there is no evidence of such a study in Gish Abay town district. The purpose of thie study was to assess the prevalence of color blindness among school children in Gish Abaya town district, Ethiopia.MethodsThe study used a community-based analytical cross-sectional study design with multistage cluster random sampling technique from September to October 2016. Three primary schools were selected randomly in the district of Gish Abay town district. Ishihara color plates (24 –edition) was used for color vision test and Snellen’ tumbling ‘E’ chart was used for visual acuity test. The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 statistical software and binary logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with color blindness.ResultsAmong a total of 854 subjects, 850 participants with age range of 8–18 years were screened for color vision test giving a response rate of 99.53%. Among the participants, 452 (53.2%) were males and 398 (46.8%) were females. There were 36 (4.24%) cases of impaired color vision. Among these, 27 (3.18%) were males and 9 (1.06%) were females. Out of 36 cases of color blindness, 15 (1.77%) were deutan, 7 (0.82%) were protan and 14(1.65%) were unclassified (both deutan and protan forms). The variables; sex adjusted odds ratio (AOR [95% Confidence Interval] =3.19 [1.45; 6.98], p-value = 0.004); and visual impairment (AOR [95% CI] =4.15 [1.77; 9.75], p-value = 0.001) were significantly associated with color impairment.ConclusionThe prevalence of childhood color blindness in Gish Abay town district was relatively similar with other studies in Ethiopia. Sex and visual impairment are factors found to be related with the children’s color blindness. Periodical eye examination at the time of school admission is recommended to adjust the children’s occupation early in life.

Screening of Colour Vision in Paediatric Population

“…However our results were higher than a few studies like 2.9% in (Mahajan and Gogna, 1977) ,2.5% in (Gupta et al, 2017), 2.1% in (Agarwal and Bansod, 2014), 2.02% in (Chandak et al, 2017), 1.4% in (Basavaraj et al, 2019), and lower than the prevalence rate of Manipuri Muslims (Shah et al, 2013) which was 5.28%. On comparing our results with the studies done across the world, near similar results were found in studies like 4.1% in (Woldeamanuel and Geta, 2018), 4.24% in (Wale et al, 2018). Further, there are few studies with Low prevalence rate, like 3.8% in (Niroula and Saha, 2010), 2.1% in (Shrestha et al, 2010), 2.6% in (Tabansi et al, 2008), 2.5% in (Oduntan et al, 2019), 2.3% in (Ugalahi et al, 2016).…”

Prevalence and Allele Frequency of Red-Green Color Vision Defects among School Children in Repi Primary School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

“…These frequencies are relatively low compared to recent study done by Mitiku et al [2] among university students at Hawassa, Ethiopia. A comparable frequency of deutan and protan are reported in done in Gish-Abay town by Wale et al [19]. The slight difference in the prevalence could be due to genetic, geographic, population movements and cultural/religious factors [2,12,18].…”

Prevalence and allele frequency of Congenital Colour Vision Deficiency (CCVD) among students at Hawassa University, Ethiopia

“…In addition, in some fields of studies such as electrical engineering, agriculture, laboratory, forensic sciences, chemical engineering, soil engineering and architectural engineering normal colour vision is important [2,13,22]. In Ethiopia, there are a limited number of studies done to assess the prevalence of congenital colour vision deficiency and its potential professional impacts [23][24][25][26][27][28]. The objective of the present study was to assess the prevalence and allele frequencies of red-green colour vision defects among students at Hawassa University, Ethiopia.…”