Di­rec­tor of the Autism Sup­port Net­work T&T, Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase, is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to re­duce the wait time for autism di­ag­no­sis at health­care fa­cil­i­ties.

On the eve of World Autism Aware­ness Day yes­ter­day, Ma­hase said par­ents and care­givers cur­rent­ly face ex­ces­sive de­lays in ac­cess­ing di­ag­nos­tic as­sess­ments for their chil­dren.

World Autism Aware­ness Day is be­ing ob­served to­day, April 2.

“The av­er­age wait time used to be 12 to 18 months to get an ap­point­ment at a pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tion. How­ev­er, for the past cou­ple of years, the wait time has in­creased to 18 to 24 months,” Ma­hase claimed.

In a me­dia re­lease, she ex­plained that these de­lays hin­der ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion, which is cru­cial for im­prov­ing out­comes for autis­tic in­di­vid­u­als. She said time­ly di­ag­no­sis and in­ter­ven­tion ser­vices are not a priv­i­lege, but a ne­ces­si­ty.

“Ear­ly di­ag­no­sis al­lows chil­dren on the autism spec­trum to re­ceive ap­pro­pri­ate ed­u­ca­tion­al sup­port, ther­a­py, and re­sources that en­hance their qual­i­ty of life and abil­i­ty to thrive. With­out time­ly ac­cess to these ser­vices, fam­i­lies strug­gle, chil­dren fall be­hind, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for de­vel­op­ment and in­clu­sion are lost,” she said.

She called on Deyals­ingh to in­crease the num­ber of pro­fes­sion­als qual­i­fied to di­ag­nose autism in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem, im­ple­ment stream­lined process­es to en­sure ear­li­er screen­ings and re­fer­rals, es­tab­lish more out­reach clin­ics through­out T&T to ease the bur­den on cen­tralised fa­cil­i­ties and part­ner with non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) and pri­vate prac­ti­tion­ers to ex­pand ac­cess to di­ag­nos­tic and in­ter­ven­tion ser­vices.

In re­sponse, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Davlin Thomas said the Child De­vel­op­ment Clin­ic at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, which treats with Autism, re­port­ed a wait­ing time of two weeks. But he said be­cause of an in­crease in pa­tients, as many as 50 new ones per month, the wait­ing time for di­ag­no­sis is now an es­ti­mat­ed three months. He said the NCRHA is ac­tive­ly try­ing to re­cruit oth­er ser­vice providers to as­sist in the work of the clin­ic.