King Mohammed calls for national program to fight handicap
Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Saturday called for a comprehensive national program to struggle against handicap.
"We urge all the components of our civil society (…) as well as the mass media to join your Foundation to launch a comprehensive national program to foster awareness to the need of prevention and early treatment to halt the handicaps," the king said.
This came in a message read out by Royal advisor, Mohamed Moatassim, at the opening session of an international colloquy on the prevention and treatment of neurological handicap.
"The program should focus on mobilization to implement the recommendations and guidelines of this colloquy in order to serve public health in our Kingdom, through adopting scientific preventive means and using the available treatment. We also urge all public powers, especially the bodies of the health ministry and the ministry in charge of the integration of disabled people, to participate in this general mobilization," said the King.
The Rabat symposium, held under the generic topic of "Treatment and Prevention to Alleviate Handicap," is attended by several national and foreign experts attending.
The experts are debating the treatment of malfunctions of the nervous system and the role of prevention and curative measures to avert the disease.
The encounter is sponsored by the Hassan II Foundation of Struggle and Prevention of Nervous System Diseases, which is celebrating this year the 10th anniversary of its creation.
King Mohammed VI further lauded the holding of the symposium in encouraging scientific research on the disease.
He stressed that handicap represent one of his major and permanent concerns. "Handicap represents a permanent concern of our Majesty in view of the consequences it has. It cripples the human-being's vital energy, jeopardizes his future and deprives him from most precious potentials enabling him to participate, positively, efficiently and fruitfully, in the life of his society and country," he said.
He underlined, in this vein, the importance of studying malfunctions to avert handicap. "Studying the malfunctions that befall children in the growth phase, the early diagnosis and timely treatment of these organic and functional malfunctions can avert a handicap that may last a lifetime," he said, adding "even if these malfunctions are not completely cured, their treatment can alleviate their harm and contain their effect, especially as we know that the various handicaps befalling children in our society can be averted through making use of the innovations and breakthroughs achieved by scientists in industrialized countries," he said.