The founder of Autism Sib­lings and Friends Net­work is call­ing for an end to the stig­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with peo­ple liv­ing with Autism Spec­trum Dis­or­der (ASD) and oth­er spe­cial needs.

Ad­vo­cate Maya Kir­ti Nanan made the call as this coun­try and oth­ers around the globe ob­served World Autism Aware­ness Day.

The day is ob­served on April 2 an­nu­al­ly and this year the theme was Em­pow­er­ing Autis­tic Voic­es and Cel­e­brat­ing Re­gion­al Per­spec­tive. The en­tire month of April is des­ig­nat­ed as Autism Aware­ness Month and Autism Ac­cep­tance Month.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Health Ser­vices (NHS) of the UK, autism is nei­ther a dis­ease nor a se­vere ill­ness. The NHS in­stead de­scribed autism as a spec­trum where an autis­tic per­son’s mind/brain works dif­fer­ent­ly to oth­ers.

But Nanan said de­spite the aware­ness, chil­dren with autism are still sub­ject­ed to slurs.

“There’s still a lot of stig­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with in­di­vid­u­als with autism and spe­cial needs. Per­sons may not recog­nise a child with autism and are quick to say hor­ren­dous re­marks about them,” said Nanan.

She ex­pressed con­cern about the lack of avail­able fa­cil­i­ties. The founder of Autism Sib­lings and Friends al­so rec­om­mend­ed more di­verse sys­tems be put in place to ac­com­mo­date those with autism and oth­er spe­cial needs.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go com­mem­o­rates Autism Aware­ness to­day but for­gets it the oth­er 364 days of the year!” Nanan claimed.

She called on the Gov­ern­ment to do more to raise aware­ness and ed­u­cate the pub­lic on autism. Nanan ad­vised that events and sem­i­nars should be host­ed not on­ly for the wider pub­lic but al­so for peo­ple liv­ing with autism and their fam­i­lies to re­ceive the nec­es­sary sup­port.

She al­so made a call for chil­dren with autism to re­ceive ear­ly di­ag­no­sis and nec­es­sary care to as­sist them and their fam­i­lies.

Mean­while, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir, who is al­so a med­ical doc­tor, de­clared his sup­port for in­di­vid­u­als with autism on World Autism Aware­ness Day.

He too urged the Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor to show their sup­port for autis­tic in­di­vid­u­als by part­ner­ing with oth­er autism non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Rag­bir al­so stressed to the pub­lic the im­por­tance of cre­at­ing a safe space for cit­i­zens with autism to en­sure they can thrive and “take their right­ful place as val­ued mem­bers of so­ci­ety.”