SOME PEDIATRICIANS' VIEWS CONCERNING PROBLEMS OF HANDICAPPED CHILDREN

[摘要] MANY obstacles must be overcome before the health agencies and professions can successfully rehabilitate handicapped persons or adequately protect others from similar disablement, according to outstanding American pediatricians.A survey of pediatricians' attitudes toward physical and mental crippling, recently completed by the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children, New York City, revealed a universal awareness that many important needs of the handicapped are still unmet and a determination that greater, more imaginative efforts must be made to meet them.The biggest obstacle to full relief for the handicapped, as viewed by many survey respondents, is the lack of basic scientific knowledge concerning the cause of their diseases. Another obstacle of comparable seriousness is the lagging dissemination, among practicing physicians and other health workers who treat the handicapped, of the scientific knowledge which does exist and of the latest developments in techniques.Although pediatricians realize that serious shortages exist in health facilities, personnel and other resources for direct care and treatment of handicapped individuals, they show relatively greater concern over deficiencies in the relevant knowledge and ineffectiveness of the technics now available. One reason for this view lies in the feeling that some diseases—for example, cerebral palsy—can never be treated with full success, once they exist; and that the necessary alternative is to prevent onset by further study of their causes.

[学科分类] 儿科学