Edappally school to get physiotherapy centre

KOCHI: It is good news for the differently-abled children from the Ernakulam sub-district. The Government UP School at Edappally is soon to get a full-fledged physiotherapy centre for children with special needs. The funds for the building will be allocated from the local funds of MLA Benny Behanan. The physiotherapy centre is a part of the Central government’s Inclusive Education for Disabled Children (IEDC) programme which looks at integrating differently-abled children in normal schools.Under the IEDC programme, children identified with various kinds of disability are selected and given physiotherapy sessions twice a week. “There are three kinds of differently-abled students who get treatment here. First, there are those who are disabled but are still in school, secondly, there are the home-based students and thirdly, the ones who are out of school owing to temporary illness or other related reasons.Though the physiotherapy treatment under the IEDC programme was inaugurated at Edappally in July this year, due to the absence of a building for the purpose, the equipment were kept in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) building. “As of now the facility is functioning out of the SSA building. This is a common building meant for training of the SSA staff, meetings, camps and all other related programmes of the SSA. It is not always possible to have a building for physiotherapy. This is often becomes a problem as most disabled patients need continuous treatment”, said Thomas, Edappally BPO. One of the reasons for the delay in procuring the funds was that there are no funds under the SSA for a new building for physiotherapy. “We had sent applications to several to centres including the Primary Health Centre at Edappally, the District Medical Office and so on,” said the BPO.