Description
1 in 5 Indian school children suffer from blurry vision. Conventionally, Indian parents think vision problems only come with age and so children aren’t taken for regular eye checkups. As a result, these health issues remain undetected and is felt most in non-urban regions of India. We broke this cultural health misconception by designing the Ek Tara Test. Inspired by an ancient method used to test hunters’ eyesight using the stars, we turned the simple act of stargazing into vision screening activation in 140+ schools across 25 towns in India, testing over 100,000 children. We also collaborated with India’s leading children’s comic publication, Tinkle, to make the test accessible to over 1.2M children across the country. A key benchmark for early intervention was identifying pre-myopic children - Through the test, we found 45% of children fell into this category and 47% of students were found with "Non-Normal" vision, indicating their current prescriptions were likely incorrect.
