Team arrives in Sukkur to spread the word on special children

Team to educate NGOs, journalists, officials of social welfare depts, parents about special children and their needs.

SUKKUR: A 12-member mission of the ‘Mangol Child (Down’s Syndrome) Special Welfare Foundation’ and Al-Jalal Welfare Trust Jhelum has reached Sukkur to create awareness about special children and their rights.

The committee is led by the Al-Jalal chairman Jalal Akbar.

Talking to The Express Tribune outside the Sukkur Press Club on Sunday afternoon, Akbar said that in 2001, his son was born with Down’s Syndrome.

This is a hereditary disease in which the physical and mental growth of a newborn baby is slower than normal, he explained.

Faced with the difficulties of raising a child with a special condition, especially in a society that pays no attention to children with extra needs, Akbar decided to start a welfare organisation that was devoted to them.

The two foundations are collaborating for this awareness mission, which started from Rawalpindi on October 4, 2010 and will end on December 18 in Jhelum. Akbar said the team will visit 48 districts and will educate NGOs, journalists, officials of social welfare departments and parents about special children and their needs.

In Sukkur too, they met government and private social workers and briefed them on how to deal with children with Down’s Syndrome. “So that instead of treating them as a burden they teach the children to become productive persons,” he said.

The foundations plan to construct modern boarding complexes for special children, to educate their parents on how to bring them up, to provide all services to special children free of cost, including enhancing their ability to talk through speech therapy, and to provide them with a better education.

John Langdon Down, a British scientist, first described the chromosomal condition in 1887.

It is a condition in which extra genetic material causes delays in the way a child develops, both mentally and physically. It affects about 1 in every 800 babies. Normally, at the time of conception a baby inherits genetic information from its parents in the form of 46 chromosomes: 23 from the mother and 23 from the father. In most cases of DS, a child gets an extra chromosome 21 — for a total of 47 chromosomes instead of 46. It’s this extra genetic material that causes the physical features and developmental delays associated with DS.

Such children take longer to learn and need repetition to catch certain words, which is why they must be paid extra attention, Akbar added.

The Al-Jalal Welfare Trust has been working for the welfare of special children for 20 years. Akbar said his trust has established vocational centres for special children while it also provides uniforms, books and other necessary items to women and children.

Akbar urged the government to pay attention to children with Down’s Syndrome and allocate separate classrooms for them in all special children’s schools. They should also be given free medical insurance.

The mission leaves for Larkana on Monday.

Published in The Express Tribune November 22^nd, 2010.