As an obstetrician and gynecologist, Lei Dongzhu, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, is known for calling for policies to intervene in birth defects for seven consecutive years. After the birth defect issue aroused attention and relevant policies were implemented, this year, Lei Dongzhu’s representative turned his attention to the group of children with autism.
Lei Dongzhu, deputy to the National People’s Congress
“At present, the number of autistic patients in my country has exceeded one Tens of millions of people, and it is growing at a high rate every year.” Lei Dongzhu said. At present, there is a lack of early routine screening for autism, and the diagnosis time is long, resulting in late diagnosis and missed best rehabilitation intervention. For the only effective rehabilitation treatment for autism, the cost is as high as 60,000 yuan per year, and it cannot be reimbursed by medical insurance. To this end, she suggested that the government should increase investment and multi-department linkage, include autism screening in the routine screening of free child insurance, and establish “early screening, early diagnosis, and early intervention” for rescue rehabilitation and life course of children with autism. assistance system. At the same time, the autism rehabilitation training fee is included in the special disease reimbursement management category.
Lei Dongzhu introduced that before the age of 3 is the golden age of treatment for children with autism, the earlier the intervention, the better. However, due to the fact that the current autism screening is not included in the routine screening of child insurance, the professional ability of primary medical staff to screen and diagnose, and the general public’s low awareness of the disease, most children are often still incapable of being diagnosed when they are two or three years old. Only when they can speak, or have language regression after normal language development, or even complete loss, they have to go to major medical institutions for diagnosis. According to the survey of “Early Screening and Referral of Children with Autism”, more than 74% of children with autism have been diagnosed by a doctor for two or more times, and nearly 50% of children with autism take more than one year from suspicion to diagnosis. 52% of parents were not able to enter rehabilitation intervention as soon as possible due to the great psychological impact of their child’s diagnosis process and lack of follow-up guidance.
After a diagnosis, recovery from autism is also difficult.
First of all, the rehabilitation treatment cycle for autism is generally calculated on an annual basis, the annual training cost is at least 60,000, and the training time takes 6-7 years or even longer. At present, rehabilitation expenses are not covered by medical insurance reimbursement. Although according to the “Opinions of the State Council on Establishing a Rehabilitation Assistance System for Disabled Children”, various regions have given some rehabilitation subsidies to children with autism from 0 to 6 years old according to local conditions. A subsidy is still a drop in the bucket for families with children in need of long-term rehabilitation. According to a survey, nearly 30% of households’ total economic income is not enough to pay for rehabilitation training. At the same time, there are very few professional autism rehabilitation training institutions, and there is a serious shortage of teachers and funds. The first “Report on the Development of China’s Autism Education and Rehabilitation Industry” shows that about 90% of the training institutions are organized by autistic children. Parents, business generally struggles. As a result, some children have to wait for a year just to line up, resulting in a lag in treatment. About two-thirds of children cannot live independently in adulthood because they cannot receive effective rehabilitation in a timely manner.
In this regard, Lei Dongzhu suggested strengthening the top-level design, multi-department linkage, and establishing a rescue rehabilitation system for autistic children with “early screening, early diagnosis, and early intervention”. For example, the National Health and Medical Commission, the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the Ministry of Education and other departments have cooperated to establish a rescue rehabilitation system for children with autism that seamlessly connects early screening, medical diagnosis and rehabilitation education; the government has increased large-scale construction and infrastructure. Investing, adopting various modes such as public construction and private construction to encourage forces from all walks of life to participate in the establishment of rehabilitation institutions.
Meanwhile, Lei Dongzhu also proposed substantial supporting policies. First, financial departments and local governments provide budgets, and the National Health and Health Commission has included autism screening in routine screening of free child insurance to strengthen the training of professionals.
The second is to include the autism rehabilitation training fee into the special disease reimbursement management category, and set up a single reimbursement limit for treatment or a fixed monthly reimbursement ratio, so as to facilitate more autistic children to receive timely and effective treatment.
Aiming at the family and social problems such as education, employment, and pensions of patients caused by the lag of autism rehabilitation, Lei Dongzhu suggested to increase publicity, eliminate social discrimination, and create a fair educational environment. At the same time, deepen the reform of school education, improve the integrated education system, and encourage more schools to accept children with autism; use market resources to explore and support rehabilitation education for autism at all ages, vocational education and nursing care by means of government-purchased services and trust funds. Nursing institutions.
“In short, from the perspective of the ‘life course’, from early screening and diagnosis, early rescue intervention, early childhood education, school-age school attendance, vocational training, employment, pension and other links, Provide all-round social support to truly solve the problems faced by this group.” Lei Dongzhu said.
[Source: The Paper]
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