Minister Koca: The Prevalence of Autism in the World Has Increased 20 Times in the Last 240 Years

Health Minister Dr. Fahrettin Koca made the opening speech of the Autism Awareness Day symposium online.

“Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that is congenital or presents in the first years of life. Autism affects the social development, communication and behavior of individuals. With the increase in its incidence, autism is becoming increasingly important.

I will share a surprising data with you: The prevalence of autism in the world has increased 20 times in the last 240 years. This increase has revealed the importance of the services to be provided.

As the Ministry of Health, we know that there is a need for infrastructure projects that will set an example for other countries and serve our country for many years, as well as the problems that we need to find solutions for in the short term. We carry out meticulous studies in 17 different areas where we have identified problems. In this context, our team is working on new projects with international stakeholders.

In addition, we cooperate with our non-governmental organizations at every stage. We aim to increase the quality of services to higher levels through cooperation. In today's event, we wanted you to listen to some of the work we do for our special needs individuals, not from us, but from the representatives of our families we work with.

You will hear from the representatives of the NGOs, with whom we work shoulder to shoulder, about the work done on the reorganization of our Emergency Service services for these children, the point reached in the Individual Service Counseling model, the plans for Oral and Dental Health, and the new services we will provide on drug-free intervention. As we have made a habit of doing in the field of Autism and Rare Diseases, you will have the chance to listen to different models that can contribute to our country from our international participants in this event.

I want to underline one point here. Although we came together as part of the Autism Awareness Day event, I want you to know that the services in question are planned for the benefit of all individuals with mental special needs, especially Down Syndrome.

Last year, at our Autism Awareness Day event, I stated that although we were in the pandemic period, a self-sacrificing work was done. This year, you will witness the examples of the pilot implementations of these plans, the first data of our pilot centers and the Health Service plans we made in the light of the first data. In the coming years, we will work on the dissemination of these applications, the infrastructure of which has been prepared, and the parties are known for their functionality.

As the Ministry of Health, our aim is to reach a high level of service in this field. We know this is a long and difficult journey, but we continue to work with determination. We carry out our work meticulously within the framework of a planning.

To give an example, we have come a long way in terms of early detection and effective early intervention, which are the two most important factors that contribute to the positive course of autism. We should proudly state that we have reached 5 million children with the autism screening program we started about 2 years ago. The program continues to be successfully implemented by our family physicians, field coordinators and child and adolescent mental health specialists.

After this success, our new goal is to reach a much more qualified service level in early intervention. I would like to express that our Ministry will initiate new studies for this purpose in 2022.

At the beginning of my words, I said that Autism is a complex neuro-developmental disorder that is congenital or presents in the first years of life. This disorder causes autistic individuals to be unable to establish daily social relations with their environment at the level required by human existence.

On the other hand, we know that there are autistic people who are known for their unique abilities, or we can sense some portraits that have contributed to the culture with our current perspective. There are elements that can be called autistic in the personalities of some high intelligences. Of course, it is not possible to generalize here. But we should know that these closed worlds contain very valuable, rare and very delicate features. The man who is exalted in nature deserves the highest attention. This high interest is our duty.”