Myopia in Children is a major cause of concern worldwide. The prevalence is only increasing day by day. With lifestyle changes and safety issues, children are being confined to live indoors thus being exposed very little to natural sunlight. Studies conducted worldwide confirm that sunlight exposure of minimum 11 hours per week is essential to prevent myopic shift and progression in children. Schools have started to take steps to design an infrastructure as well as curriculum to give minimum 1000-3000 lux units of sunlight exposure for 3 hrs daily or 100000 lux units for 30 minutes daily.
With present day scenario where we confine our children to studying and playing indoors, mostly glued to digital devices, we are going to be witnessing an ever increasing trend of myopic shift in children.
So society and schools have an equal responsibility to ensure our children get enough exposure to sunlight during their elementary school days. To ensure this, schools should have adequate recesses or hallways and classrooms should be well illuminated with enough windows. At the same time parents should make an effort to take some time out of their busy schedules to take their children out to parks and playgrounds rather than air conditioned malls and theme parks.
After all The Best Things in Life are still for Free!