Question NW4539 to the Minister of Health

Reply:

The department of Health, in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education provides integrated school health program (ISHP) to learners in schools, to among others prevent barriers to teaching and learning. Some of the service include provision of spectacles to learners who are visually impaired. The service provided through this programme include visual assessment which may result in referral of the learner to the next level of care for possible provision of spectables.

(a) the number of learners who have been provided with glasses through the specified programmes and

The actual number of learners who were provided with spectacles are in provinces and Districts as the programme implementerand are reflected here below:

 

Province	Data Element	Apr 2020 to Mar 2021	Apr 2021 to Mar 2022	Apr 2021 to Sep 2022	Totals to date
Eastern Cape	Spectacles issued to child - total	160	362	264	366
Free State	Spectacles issued to child - total	33	401	23	142
Gauteng	Spectacles issued to child - total	1 284	3 405	2 109	3 091
KwaZulu-Natal	Spectacles issued to child - total	3 374	4 620	3 466	3 912
Limpopo	Spectacles issued to child - total	329	494	590	732
Mpumalanga	Spectacles issued to child - total	213	659	469	703
Northern Cape	Spectacles issued to child - total	28	56	27	36
North West	Spectacles issued to child - total	21	188	127	218
Western Cape	Spectacles issued to child - total	384	3 511	1 702	3 184
South Africa	Spectacles issued to child - total	5 826	13 696	8 777	12 384

 

(b) The programme is a school health-based intervention, which is tailor-made for the learners only, due to limited number of school health nurses, hence the modality is delivered for specific grades and not all learners in a school. Citizens can still visit their nearest health care facilitities, where they can be screened for vision and referred to Optometrist for further diagnosis and provision of spectacles if indicated.

 

END.