GUWAHATI: Shabina Ahmed, a paediatrician from Guwahati, was awarded the National Award for Child Welfare 2014, at a glittering function at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on Saturday.
The President Pranab Mukherjee, in recognition of the valuable services to the community rendered by Ahmed in the field of child welfare, honoured her with a citation and a medal.
Dr Shabina Ahmed has devoted her career to uplift child and adolescent developmental quality and child rights.
As founder and developmental paediatrician of her public charitable trust, Assam Autism Foundation (AAF), based in Guwahati, she has been in the pursuit of making autism and related issues better understood.
Her outreach programmes on autism and awareness teaching in the region was through collaboration with Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Impaired, and the National Trust.
She has been instrumental in developing teaching modules for inclusive education for Autism Spectrum Disorder and Learning Disability, for the Rashtryia Madhyamik Siksha programme, and is a member of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) National Consultative Meet on Childhood Disability.
In 2007 she was National Convenor of the IAP programme on childhood autism, and has a few publications to her credit, besides being a resource person for the Indo-US Autism conference, AAF has collaborated with the Design Department of IIT Guwahati on design of toys for children of autism.
Besides her training in India, she has been trained in the UK, Canada and Turkey.
She was a recipient of the 2007 ‘Sadguru Gnanannanda National Awards for Excellence in Social Work.’
