UK physician in city
SHILLONG: A large number of children with disabilities in India could have led ordinary lives if only they had received proper antenatal care.
This was the opinion of Dr Andrew Curran, a paediatric neurologist from the UK, who was in Shillong this past week to conduct workshops with teachers and medical professionals, while also meeting disabled and autistic children at an open clinic.
“We know that good antenatal care as received in the West substantially reduces disability in children. So in western society, only 10 per cent of brain damage is caused at birth, the other 90 per cent in the womb, for example through infection, which is no one’s fault,” Dr Curran told The Shillong Times.
In India, however, Dr Curran suspects that the situation is different. Although the figures are not available, “almost all” the children he sees in these clinics, who have severe disabilities, experienced cerebral hypoxia (a reduction in oxygen supply to the brain) at birth due to poor labour care. While not all cases are preventable, a number of them are.
Dr Curran, who has been coming to India once a year for the past six years, said he sees up to 200 children on every trip he makes to the country and he met around two dozen on his visit to Shillong, which was organised at the invitation of Dwar Jingkyrmen.
The teachers who attended the first workshop were taken through a explanation on what could be described as the science of learning – the relationship between the chemicals glutamate and dopamine, which are critical to learning; the development of the brain from infancy onwards; and that age-old stumper: why are teenagers so moody and difficult?
The 20-odd teachers were overwhelmingly positive in their response and the next day saw around 40 medical professionals taken through the brain’s role in muscle movement and ways to manage conditions like spinal muscular atrophy, cerebral palsy and dystonia.
In both workshops, Dr Curran carefully explained the need for inclusion or the mainstreaming of disability, though inclusion is not a panacea.
While pleased with the legislation (Contd on P-7)
Proper antenatal care…
(Contd from P-3) India has passed on issues of people with disabilities, it will take years, he feels, for the mindset of people on the ground to change. Inclusion also has its limits; while most disabled children can be accommodated in mainstream schools, there is still a vital role to be played by special schools.
“In the UK, when inclusion was introduced, it was felt that special schools would not be needed anymore, but we’ve found that that is not true. Yes, the majority of disabled children can go to mainstream schools, but there is a sizeable minority that are not suited to mainstream schools at any level. It leads to children being unhappy and often disruptive to the rest of the class,” Dr Curran said.
Instead, he would like to see continued government support for special schools that are trained to cater to that minority of disabled children.
“Combined with legislation, in five years this would completely transform the experience of disabled children in India,” he opined.
The way that doctors practise paediatrics in India also has some room for improvement, Dr Curran said.
Working with parents helps them cope mentally with the challenges of treating their children, gives doctors a more satisfying experience and ultimately results in better outcomes for the most important people in the process – the children.