Visual acuity testability of children in Bama and Banki towns of Borno State, Nigeria: The need to adopt HOTV protocol in school health programmes.

Despite the importance of visual acuity testing in children, no standard testing protocol was found for primary school pupils. Visual acuity screening was conducted on 400 primary school pupils in Nigeria using the HOTV protocol, nearly all the pupils 390/400 (97.5 %) had good binocular vision, only 10/400 (2.5 %) had poor vision which were monocular. Of those with poor monocular vision, 6/10 (60 %) involved the right eye while 4/10 (40 %) the left eye; these pupils were referred to the ophthalmologist for further evaluation. Because of its easy usage, the HOTV protocol can be adopted by school health programmes especially for the primary school pupils.