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, this health issue remains undetected and is felt most in non-urban regions of India. We broke this cultural health misconception with an innovative solution - 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 100,000+ children. We collaborated with India’s leading children’s comic publication, Tinkle, to make the test accessible to 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.
