More than 400,000 child development screenings were performed in the past year, discovering more than 25,000 suspected developmental delays, since the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) launched the screening service for children younger than seven on July 1 last year, the agency said yesterday.
A four-year-old girl nicknamed Hsiao-an (小安) appeared to be growing normally, but her mother observed that she often had mood swings and would easily lose her temper, such as bursting out crying when playing with blocks, scribble frantically when trying to draw and often fall down when walking.
Pediatrician Mai Jian-fang (麥建方) said after receiving a child development screening, Hsiao-an was evaluated to have normal language and social development, but struggled with certain behaviors such as hopping on one leg, cutting paper with scissors and drawing, and was suspected to have fine motor skill delays.
Photo: Lin Chih-yi, Taipei Times
After Hsiao-an was referred to an interdisciplinary assessment center for child development, she was confirmed to have hand-eye coordination issues because she had a significant difference in eyesight between her two eyes — up to four diopters, he said.
The girl’s motor skills and mood swings improved rapidly after she was proscribed corrective glasses and rehabilitation, he added.
The service offers six screening sessions per child before they reach the age of seven to assess gross motor skills, fine motor skills, language development and social development.
As of the end of last month, a total of 402,594 screenings were conducted in the past year, finding more than 25,000 suspected developmental delay cases — or 6.3 percent of the total — and also about 63,000 cases that needed follow-up and healthcare instructions, HPA Director-General Wu Chao-chun (吳昭軍) said.
The screenings were conducted by more than 2,600 pediatricians, family doctors and doctors in the Holistic Physicians for Young Children program at more than 1,200 healthcare facilities across the nation, the HPA said.
HPA official Lin Yu-hsuan (林宇旋) said most of the suspected development delay cases struggled in language and cognitive skills, accounting for 75.6 percent, followed by social development at 29 percent, fine motor skills at 28.8 percent, and gross motor skills at 17.3 percent.
Doctors refer them to an interdisciplinary assessment center for child development, with the number of centers increasing from 52 in 2022 to 88 this year, including 17 designated key hospitals that are not allowed to reject referred cases, Wu said.
The centers are required to let the referred cases book an assessment appointment within 30 days and provide a comprehensive assessment report to the HPA within 45 days, he said, adding that the compliance rate was more than 90 percent last year and hopefully it would reach 100 percent this year.
Mackay Memorial Hospital Child Intervention and Developmental Assessment Center director Chen Hui-ju (陳慧如) said sometimes the assessment of development delay is very complicated, demanding professional knowledge and time.
As many centers are established in hospitals, and many are facing a shortage of healthcare workers, she hopes the government can provide more resources to help retain workers and ensure high-quality assessments, she said.
The HPA recommends three steps for parents to follow — first, refer to the Children’s Health Handbook (兒童健康手冊) and make daily observations of their child’s development; second, use the six screening services according to the recommended schedule; and third, if the child is suspected to have developmental delays, get an assessment at interdisciplinary
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