Indian Optometrist Sunita Agarwal’s Historic Scientific Instructional Course at the recently held European Academy of Childhood Disability Conference

This year Sunita Agarwal’s scientific abstract for Instructional Course was accepted by the European Academy of childhood disability for its annual conference. Instructional Courses are only selected if there is some knew knowledge that the world needs to know, according to the Scientific Committee Members.

The abstract titled “Binocular and ocular functional diagnostics made simple in children with disabilities for a multi-disciplinary team of medical professionals involved in treatment of children with disabilities” was accepted to be presented as an instructional course for the attendees of the conference. This is the first time that an instructional course has been accepted to be presented in this prestigious annual conference from India. It’s a matter of immense pride for NCDC [Nabajatak Child Development Centre] and India.

Apart from the instructional course, 3 scientific research posters of Agarwal were also selected for presentation at EACD 2023 conference. Agarwal’s dedication, sincerity and hard work have placed India very high in clinical attributes as well as research in the field of developmental paediatrics and vision therapy. 

The European Academy of Childhood Disability (EACD) was founded in 1989 and is an international not-for-profit association for anyone with a clinical and/or scientific interest in childhood-onset disabilities in Europe. The mission of EACD is to promote research and education for the benefit of people with childhood-onset disabilities throughout Europe and beyond. EACD holds an annual conference to highlight clinical and research developments in childhood disabilities. This conference is always attended by doctors from across the world who specialise in developmental paediatrics.

This year’s annual conference was held at Ljubljana, Slovenia recently. Total of 17 Scientific presentations were selected from Nabajatak Child Development Centre [NCDC] alone, making India world’s highest contributor for this EACD. Sunita Agarwal has collaboratively presented 4 of these herself.

Sunita Agarwal is a behavioural and developmental optometrist and specialises in developmental and Neuro developmental disorders of children. She is also the only optometric vision therapist certified by the prestigious college of Optometrists in vision development, USA. Agarwal is also certified in ADOS II from UK. 

Agarwal is one of the directors in Nabajatak Child Development Centre, Kolkata. NCDC as an organisation provides multidisciplinary therapies to children with developmental disorders. This organisation had its humble beginnings in 2019 and has already reached a status of repute in India. NCDC, Kolkata is one of the very few child development centres in India which offers vision therapy as a prominent specialty. Mrs. Agarwal heads the vision therapy team of 6 well-trained optometrists. 

Sunita Agarwal’s instructional course was very well attended by doctors and therapists from across the world and was very highly appreciated. Her course simplified evaluation of the binocular system through her lucid presentation and demonstrations. It emanated considerable interest in initiating “vision and vision therapy” as a part of the multidisciplinary teams in child development centres across the world. This makes NCDC unique and most successful of the Child Development Centres across India.