PARENTS NEED TO HAVE KNOWLEDGE IN PREVENTING DISABILITIES TO CHILDREN - PM

IPOH (Perak, Malaysia), May 3 (Bernama) -- Prime Minister Najib Razak said parents need to have basic knowledge to prevent any adverse consequences like disabilities to their children at an early stage.

He said with such knowledge, parents could take the necessary preventive measures to avoid disabilities to their children that could hurt their potential and capability.

"From the preventive aspect, parents must understand the high-risk factors that can cause disabilities to their children.

"For instance, when a child has high fever, parents often take it lightly and make no attempt to reduce the child's body temperature with the very simple therapy of placing ice on his forehead.

"But because they are not aware of this, the untreated high fever could worsen and cause disability (due to brain damage) to the child."

Najib said this when launching the Setia Bakti Programme: Campaign on Early Intervention to Prevent Disabilities to Children" at the Indera Mulia Stadium, here, Tuesday.

The prime minister said to date, 428 community rehabilitation centres had been established nationwide, where more than 14,000 special children including the physically disabled, and hearing and visually impaired were given guidance, education and skills training to help them become self-reliant later on in life.

He said another 4,500 in this special group who were staying at home, were being guided and cared for by the centres' workers who made house visits.

However, Najib believed that were still many other physically and mentally challenged children who did not have the opportunity to benefit from the services of these centres due to their parents' ignorance, lackadaisical attitude or even embarrassment to send their special children to such centres.

"Such an attitude should not exist because based on expert opinion, these special children have the potential of being guided and trained in certain skills to make them productive individuals who can contribute to society and the nation.

"If these opportunities are not made use of, the children will not be able to go through life as self-reliant individuals. Therefore, I hope that through the Semai Bakti Programme, parents and guardians will be given the best exposure to understanding the potentials of these special children," he said.

The early intervention campaign is spearheaded by the Welfare Body of the Wives of Ministers and Deputy Ministers (Bakti) under its Semai Bakti Programme, which is a community service programme. It is a continuous campaign to be carried out nationwide.
With the slogan, "Prevention Is Better Than Cure", the campaign is aimed at increasing public awareness, especially among the younger generation, on the importance of early preventive measures to avoid disabilities to children.

Najib said the theme of the campaign was apt as taking such measures would prevent thousands of people from having life-long disabilities.

He said the early intervention efforts would even be more successful if the Health Ministry could send experts to schools to detect abnormalities in the students.