Putul calls for twin-track autism approach

Saima Hossain Putul, who spearheads autism campaign in Bangladesh, has called for developing “twin track approach” for the special children and their families.

US Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 1 April 2014, 08:55 PM
Updated : 1 April 2014, 08:55 PM

She said, while individuals and their families would need lifelong support and medicare, assistance should be provided to individuals who are higher functioning to approach medical, educational and life skills training.

This will help them develop the skills and become employable and economically independent individuals while still receiving varying levels of social support, observed the expert.

The Chair of the National Committee on Autism, Putul was speaking at a United Nations panel in New York on Bangladesh’s progress in autism awareness and actions taken in addressing their needs on Tuesday, a day before World Autism Awareness Day.

The daughter of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said development disorders like autism are particularly challenging “not only because of the diversity in symptom presentation but also in their varying levels of functionality”.

“…we know that almost 50 percent of the spectrum have average intellectual abilities and therefore, if given the education they can be very successful,” she said.

In Bangladesh, until recently parents used to hide children with such disorder.

It is largely due to her efforts that the UN and WHO have endorsed two different resolutions on autism calling countries to work for the children suffering from the neurological disorder.

Putul herself is a US-licensed psychologist and a global advocate for the US-based research organisation 'Autism Speaks'.

In the panel she highlighted the steps Bangladesh had taken since July 2011 when Dhaka hosted first-ever international autism met.

Impressed with Bangladesh’s awareness-raising, the panel asked her how Bangladesh had been able to achieve such “great progress” in awareness in a short time.

She said her mother being prime minister “certainly” helped her and that she was “always supportive of persons with disabilities”. Putul added that Hasina helped her get recognition that they need support.

The Prime Minister in the last five years patronised the art of persons with disabilities, particularly those with autism using them for her official greeting cards.

“This has been a tremendous impetus to boost their talent,” she said amid applause.

She also spoke about the need of teachers training since “teachers don’t have the knowledge to support and to work with children with disabilities”.

“Disability information has been incorporated into teacher training manuals and secondary school social science textbooks and will soon be into training programmes in medical schools,” she said.

She did not forget to point out the shortcomings particularly resource constraints and relevant manpower.

“We have limited infrastructure to provide therapeutic treatment, we lack sufficient specialists, therapists and technologists,” she told the panel.

“There is very little collaboration among organisations and there is shortage of funds,” she said, which means “it is difficult to train our existing service providers and scaling up training of professionals in the field”.

“We also lack standardised training and specialised treatment providers,” she continued.

According to her, a step in addressing the needs of those with autism spectrum disorders would be “to build culturally sensitive and cost effective early identification protocols for all developmental domains and to ensure that it is a part of all the health checkups even those conducted by non-specialists”.

“One way would be to make it a part of our routine vaccination programmes which could easily be implemented in all developing countries,” she said.

She, however, said evidence-based interventions would still be possible in a country where there is a dearth of specialists by developing “peer-supported community-based intervention” modules where parents and caregivers function as “co-therapists”.