PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to introduce inclusive education in two schools of special education on pilot basis to enable the children to start a normal life.

“We have given a proposal to the social welfare department to upgrade facilities in two of the 11 special education schools to enhance the mobility of physically challenged children,” said Dr Mahboobur Rahman, a former head of physiotherapy department at Hayatabad Medical Complex.

Speaking at a free medical camp at Habib Physiotherapy Complex Hayatabad on Sunday, he said that number of special children was rising due to economic hardships, burgeoning poverty, surge in population in addition to war against terrorism in former tribal areas.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Pakistan has 15 per cent population with disabilities, including 80 per cent physical disabilities, and the rest suffer from mental and other forms, which need assistive devices, psychological assistance and speech and hearing therapies to make them useful citizens of the society.

Dr Rahman appreciated the provincial government for launching physiotherapy services in district headquarters hospitals in 2015. About 100 physiotherapists are now working throughout the province. He said that government started providing assistive devices, such as artificial limbs on Sehat Card Plus that would help the people with disabilities as most of them belonged to poor families.

During the daylong medical camps, more than 100 patients were examined. They were also given assistive devices, including wheelchairs.

Dr Hafiz Yasin, on the occasion, said that physiotherapy could help children with autism, cerebral palsy and polio victims to become normal people. He also suggested that special children should be allowed to study in general schools along with normal students in the same classrooms.

He said that inclusive schools were needed to enable the special to hold pen, change clothes, wear socks and shoes and attend bathrooms. He said that inclusive education gained worldwide currency where people with disabilities were training on how to drive vehicles through modification to ensure their accessibility through changing patterns and alternation.

Dr Said Khaliq said that inclusive education could play an important role in training of the people suffering from cerebral palsy and autism besides slow learners and mild physically challenged children.

Free corrective services provided by trained physiotherapists to polio victims benefit victims and majority of the polio-related deformities can be avoided through prompt medical checkup.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2022