The Hindu : Kerala News : Mobile disability medical board in Ernakulam soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 10, 2006

Kerala

Kerala

Mobile disability medical board in Ernakulam soon

Special Correspondent

Mobile units to examine people with disabilities

KOCHI: Mobile medical units for examining people with disabilities (PWDs) and issuing them disability certificates will be in place soon in all the districts.

District medical officers have been asked to set up `mobile disability medical boards' comprising five specialists, according to N. Ahamed Pillai, State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities.

Some districts like Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha and Kannur already have them and the rest will set up them soon, he told The Hindu. Ernakulm district would get a mobile board in a few days, he added.

The mobile boards would travel to remote areas in the district to examine those who are unable to access its services or to the doorstep of the bedridden disabled person at least once in a month, Dr. Pillai said.

The mobile boards— comprising an orthopaedic, an ENT specialist, an ophthalmologist, a psychiatrist and a physician— would, after examining the PWDs, issue disability certificate to those who are at least 40 per cent disabled on the spot. The disability certificate would entitle them to a lot of free services and concessions provided by the Government. It would also enable them to stake their claim to three per cent reservation in jobs and school/college admissions, Dr. Pillai said.

Disability medical boards, a statutory requirement under the Persons with Disability Act 1995, had already been set up at all Government medical colleges, district hospitals and even at some of the taluk hospitals. The identity cards, issued by the Disability Commissioner, were being distributed through the district welfare offices.

Dr. Pillai said the Commissionerate, set up in 2000 as an outcome of the Act, was now focussing on creating awareness among the masses about the need to prevent disabilities and also to identify the disabled earlier in life. For this, the Commissionerate was organising a series of workshops and classes for NGOs, small groups of paramedics and schoolteachers. He noted that the campaign was now concentrating on Anganwadi workers and Kudumbasree and literacy activists. They were the best vehicles to send the message of disability prevention to a large number of people in the villages. These groups were being trained to spot disability in children at a very early age and also to instruct parents on taking preventive measures against possible disabilities in their children.

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