RCO hits out at child eye health campaign

The Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) has criticised the Optical Confederation's Children's Eye Health Campaign 2011, stating that while the campaign repeatedly asserted sight tests were free for children under the age of 16, the NHS still had to pay for them.

The RCO Paediatric Sub-committee said it would prefer parents to be informed of the evidence-based national programme 'aimed at detecting vision defects in children through clinical examination by appropriately trained staff'.

'We are not aware of any evidence suggesting that there are a large number of children in the UK suffering irreversible visual loss and educational underachievement because of uncorrected refractive error.'