Background: Childhood visual impairment can affect learning, development, and participation, while access to assessment and treatment remains uneven. In this review, ‘universal paediatric eye care’ means an equitable, continuous pathway connecting age-appropriate identification with confirmatory assessment, treatment, referral, and follow-up.
Methods: This narrative review examines published research and public-health guidance on childhood visual impairment and paediatric eye-care delivery. Evidence was synthesised thematically across disease burden, screening, refractive services, referral, follow-up, and implementation barriers. The available documentation did not permit reliable reconstruction of database-specific search strategies, exact search dates, or a contemporaneous study-selection log. Accordingly, the review is presented as a narrative review rather than a systematic or scoping review, and no PRISMA study-selection counts are reported.
Results: The reviewed literature and guidance consistently indicate that screening is only one step in the care pathway. Programmes must connect screening to confirmatory examination, indicated treatment, referral completion, and follow-up. The evidence base is heterogeneous in population, screening method, outcome definition, and follow-up duration; this review does not calculate pooled or harmonised regional estimates.
Conclusion: The evidence supports linking community awareness and school-based screening with confirmatory examination, appropriate treatment, referral, and follow-up; screening alone does not ensure that children complete care. No single service model can be considered effective in every setting because programmes and reported outcomes are heterogeneous. The narrative design and incomplete search documentation limit comprehensiveness and reproducibility, and publication bias remains a possible, unassessed limitation. Future evaluations should report screening protocols, referral completion, spectacle receipt and use, and longer-term outcomes.