The Kariapatti pediatric eye evaluation project: baseline ophthalmic data of children aged 15 years or younger in Southern India.

Purpose: To estimate the prevalence of ocular morbidity among children of rural southern India before developing a service delivery model for community-based pediatric eye care.

Design: Population-based cross sectional study.

Methods: Trained field-workers performed door-to-door enumeration in 74 randomly selected villages of the Kariapatti block in southern India to identify children aged 15 years or younger and performed visual acuity measurements using Cambridge crowded cards and external eye examination with torchlight.