The Pasay City government has conducted a four-day seminar to day-care center teachers and barangay health workers on how to detect and manage autistic children.

The seminar was carried out by the Autism Society of the Philippines to the city’s 112 day-care centers and 200 barangay workers to give them special training on autism that will enable the city to provide better services to its constituents.

Studies showed that about 40,000 to 500,000 Filipino children are stricken with autism but only 5 percent are actually diagnosed with the disease. Of the number, only 2 percent receive appropriate intervention.

It was also revealed that one out of 166 children is born autistic and that the incidence of autism has grown by as much as 300 percent since 1990.

Autism is usually manifested in children before they reach three years of age, authorities said.

Autism is a psychiatric disorder of childhood characterized by marked deficits in communication and social interaction, preoccupation with fantasy, language impairment, and abnormal behavior, such as repetitive acts and excessive attachment to certain objects. It is usually associated with intellectual impairment.

According to Mayor Wenceslao Trinidad, it is very important to train day-care center teachers and barangay health workers on the early detection and intervention of autism because there is lack of awareness about this behavioral problem in the Philippines especially in rural areas where a large number of parents do not recognize that their children are autistic.

Trinidad said the city government established the Special Education School (SPED) in 2000 for mentally-challenged persons.

He said the city SPED started with only four students but now has around 200 pupils mostly with Down Syndrome or Mongolism and Autism.

“We have only 40 developmental pediatricians (doctors who specialize in autism) in the country and most are based in Metro Manila. Some autistic children in the province are not even detected. Kung meron man tayong ganitong problema sa lungsod ng Pasay, we want to be sure that our barangay health workers and daycare center teachers can handle it,” Trinidad said.