A concerted campaign is essential to sensitise people to ways to deal with people with autism and to address discrimination against them and their families, said participants in a seminar in Sylhet on Tuesday.
Combating discrimination, mistreatment and isolation facing by children and people with autism and their parents is a basic requirement to bring them into the main stream society, they said.
Sylhet Osmani Medical College, Bangladesh Pratibandhi Foundation and United Nations Information Centre jointly organised the seminar held at the medical college auditorium in the morning.
The medical college hospital director, Brigadier General Shawquat Ali, addressed the programme as chief guest with the medical college principal, Osul Ahmad, in the chair.
Bangladesh Pratibandhi Foundation executive director Shamim Ferdaus and official Rumena Morshed and SOMCH Shishu Bikash Kendra (child health centre) director Shyamjoy Das, presented keynote papers in the seminar.
Divisional health officer Iqbal Hosen Chowdhury, neurology specialist Matiur Rahman, Shahjalal University Science and Technology school of medical
science faculty dean Meer Mahbubul Alam, SOMC vice-principal Harun-Ur Rashid, district civil surgeon Kamrul Islam, Bangladesh Medical
Association central vice-president Ehteshamul Haque Chowdhury, BMA Sylhet unit president Rokanuddin Ahmad
and secretary Morshed Ahmed Chowdhury, among others, addressed the programme.
The discussants also highlighted the need of establishing a specialised hospital for diagnosis and treatment of patients with autism.