TEHRAN — One in 100 newborns in Iran is diagnosed with autism, the director of the Charity Foundation for Special Diseases, Fatemeh Hashemi, has said, Iran Persian language newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Only 4,000 of the patients receive therapies and unfortunately the therapists themselves are not very well trained, Hashemi lamented.

Early diagnosis and treatment of autism before age two can make a big difference in children’s ability to manage the disease and they can easily join normal children at schools without having to struggle socially, she noted.

“We have decided to specify a special school for training such children, but we haven’t succeeded in obtaining necessary licenses to do so yet,” she said, adding that “a center specializing in autism will soon be launched in Tehran to provide the patients with proper services.”

As the early signs of the disease are not easy to detect, there are no exact statistics on the number of children who are struggling with this disorder in Iran, Hashemi explained.

To further study the situation, a conference focusing on autism will be held on November 3 and 4 in Tehran. Early diagnosis and screening, drug interference, therapy sessions, and the role of insurance companies in covering the expenses of the disease will be discussed at length in the conference, Dr. Leila Ataie-Fashtami, who is in charge of the scientific programs of the conference said.

“The conference will give us a head start as to how to deal with the disease properly,” Hashemi stated.

Autism is a serious developmental disorder that impairs the ability to communicate and interact and is characterized by restricted and repetitive behavior.

The Charity Foundation for Special Diseases, as a public and NGO entity, started its activities on May 1995.

MQ