This National Eye Health Week, we interviewed Dr Lola Solebo, Paediatric Ophthalmologist and RSBC Trustee. She talks about her passion for looking after children’s eyes and shares 5 tips for good eye health.

We asked her six questions about her journey into paediatric ophthalmology and the importance of eye health:

What is a paediatric ophthalmologist?

So a paediatric ophthalmologist is a medical doctor or surgeon who specialises in looking after the eye health and visual health of children.

Why did you decide to work in paediatric ophthalmology?

I decided to work in paediatric ophthalmology, firstly, because I, as a medical student, was fascinated about vision. And the wonderful thing about ophthalmology is that you can look at and understand the visual system in the eye. But you can also help through treatments and surgery, help to improve or return the vision of people who are affected by eye disease. And when it comes to being a paediatric ophthalmologist, I am the first born of four, and the other three are much younger than me. I spent my summers working in nurseries for two to five-year-olds. So I was always really comfortable and really enjoyed working with children. So, I brought the two together as a paediatric ophthalmologist.

Why is it important for vision impaired young people to look after their eye health?

It’s really important for visually impaired young people to look after their eye health, for two reasons: number one, to protect what vision they might have left. And number two: to make sure that their eye disorder doesn’t cause them pain, or discomfort later on in life, but they can also look after their eye health by making sure they keep on attending them regular eye checks, be that with an ophthalmologist, or an optometrist, or optician, or their orthoptist, to make sure that everything that can be done to keep their eyes as good as possible, is being done.

What would you say to sighted children & young people to look after their eyes?

What I would say to sighted children and young people to encourage them to look after their eyes, just think about how hard life would be and how hard you’d find it doing the things that you love doing if your vision wasn’t as good as it is right now. So to make sure that you maintain really good eye health for the rest of your hopefully long, long life, make sure that you look after how well you sleep, how well you eat, how active you are. And make sure that you get your eyes checked every couple of years at your local opticians.

What are your 5 top tips for good eye health?

So my five top tips for good eye health would be make sure you get enough good quality sleep. Sleep is so important for how your whole body functions. And it’s so easy to lose control of your sleep patterns in this modern life in which we live.

The second top tip is to make sure that you eat a varied diet, a rainbow plate at every meal, and if you can manage it, different brightly coloured fruits and vegetables for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And doing that you can help to maintain the tissues inside your eye.

Number three is making sure, if you can, that you don’t spend too long on your screens. That’s not so much for just the health of your eyes, but really for your whole brain development. And also, spending too long on your screens, particularly in the evenings can interfere with you getting good quality sleep.

My fourth tip is to make sure you spend some time outside. It is good for your mental health,. and also we think good for your eye development to spend as much time particularly in the first few years of your life outside as much as possible.

And my last tip is to make sure that every couple of years, you’re getting your eyes checked at your local optician, just to make sure that anything that can be done to look at your eye health is being done.

What would you say to those who ignore National Eye Health Week?

So, what I’d say to those who would ignore National Eye Health Week is you’re ignoring it because you’re taking for granted this incredible gift that we have the gift of sight. Sight is what helps young people to map out the world around them. And not just that but map out their sense of others by using facial expressions body language, to learn what it means to be human what it means to interact with other humans. You really can’t take that for granted. So please don’t ignore the health of your eyes.

Watch the interview of Dr Lola Solebo