Ministries partner for microcephaly stimulation intervention

Jun 04, 2019 News

Two government ministries have partnered to offer early stimulation intervention to individuals and their families affecte

A child with microcephaly undergoing stimulation intervention

d by microcephaly. The two partnering Ministries are Education and Public Health.
The planned intervention will be offered at the Centre for Stimulating situated in the Cyril Potter College of Education Compound which caters to children, youth and adolescents with special educational needs associated with disabilities.
The intervention will comprise transportation to and from the Centre, three days per week, where these individuals will have access to speech, occupational and physical therapy sessions. In addition, individuals will have the opportunity to be part of a continued process of assessment by psychologist and pedagogic specialists with the aim of providing early support in keeping with the Ministry of Education’s mandate for inclusive education.
This multi-disciplinary intervention will be done with the aim of mitigating the known symptoms associated with microcephaly to allow the individual to be included as much as possible in the education system.
Parents and caregivers will also benefit from training and counselling.
Microcephaly is a medical condition in which the brain does not develop properly resulting in a baby being born with a smaller than normal head. However, medical experts have found that microcephaly may be present at birth or it may develop in the first few years of life.
The disorder may stem from a wide variety of conditions or from syndromes associated with chromosomal abnormalities. It serves as an important neurological indication or warning sign, but no uniformity exists in its definition. It is usually defined as a head circumference (HC) more than two standard deviations below the mean for age and sex.
Also experts have found that there is no specific treatment that returns the head size to normal. In general, life expectancy for individuals with microcephaly is reduced and the prognosis for normal brain function is poor.
Occasional cases develop normal intelligence and grow normally, apart from persistently small head circumference.
However, it has been found that early intervention with supportive therapies, such as speech and occupational therapies, may help enhance the child’s development and improve quality of life.
Individuals with microcephaly can have a series of challenges ranging from mild to severe, based on the severity of the condition. Some of the challenges include: seizures, developmental delay, such as problems with speech, walking, sitting-up; intellectual disability (decreased ability to learn and function in daily life); problems with movement and balance; feeding problems, such as difficulty swallowing, hearing loss and vision problems.
A few years ago the Public Health Ministry saw the Zika virus as an especially formidable threat. A number of cases of microcephaly were linked to it a few years ago. Following an outbreak of Zika and a spike in cases of microcephaly in 2016, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that “there is now scientific consensus that the Zika virus is a cause of microcephaly— a congenital malformation with smaller than normal head size for age and sex. It has also been associated with other birth defects and neurologic conditions in children and adults.”
It was in light of this development that the Ministry put a number of measures in place to tackle its impact. In this regard more than 20 local doctors were trained in preparation to use ultrasound to detect microcephaly in pregnant women who were suspected to have been exposed to the Zika virus.

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