PAN/Azores advocates a study on autism and hyperactivity

O PAN/Azores today advocated a study on the prevalence, diagnosis and response in the region to autistic disorders, hyperactivity and attention deficit.

The party, which has advanced in the Legislative Assembly of the Azores with a draft resolution in this sense, aims to “collapse the lack of regional data and deepen knowledge about a reality that affects an increasing number of children and young people”.

According to a press release, the PAN/Azores understands that “the definition of effective public policies requires a solid basis of scientific information that allows understanding the evolution of diagnoses, identifying inequalities in access to specialized evaluation and adapting resources to the needs of the population”.

The party argues in its proposal that the study should cover the entire regional territory and involve the areas of health, education and social solidarity, “allowing an integrated analysis of existing responses”.

An evaluation of the evolution of the number of diagnoses, territorial distribution of cases, referral mechanisms, waiting times for evaluation, response capacity of health teams, availability of specialized professionals and the functioning of existing support structures in educational institutions is recommended.

An extensive debate is advocated with the scientific community, the orders of doctors and psychologists, health and education professionals, early intervention agencies, representative associations of families and other organizations with intervention in this area.

The political force considers that the epidemiological data available to the Azores “are scarce, outdated and inconclusive”, and it is “fundamental to understand whether the increase in registered cases corresponds to an effective increase in the prevalence of these disorders or whether it results from a greater detection and diagnosis capacity”.

The party considers it “indispensable to assess whether factors such as geographical dispersion, distance from specialized services or the absence of hospital structures in some islands may condition access to appropriate evaluation/diagnosis and monitoring”.

Through this initiative, the PAN/Azores also seeks to “identify the main difficulties experienced by families in accessing the diagnosis, therapeutic intervention and available educational and social responses, as well as to collect examples of good national and international practices that can be adapted to the archipelagic reality”.

The draft resolution also establishes that the results of the study should serve as a basis for the development of a set of measures to improve the regional response, integrated into the Regional Health Service, through the strengthening of specialized human resources, the reduction of waiting times for evaluation and diagnosis, the improvement of accessibility to services in the islands without hospital, and the strengthening of the articulation between the health, education and social intervention sectors.