(MENAFN - Muscat Daily) Medical experts from SQU have recommend that dyslexia should be officially recognised as a condition requiring special attention by concerned government authorities, and children suffering from dyslexia, like other children with special needs, should be provided with rehabilitation resources.Also called developmental reading disorder, dyslexia occurs when the brain fails to recognise and process certain symbols. Prof Lamk al Lamki, chief editor of Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal, said that dyslexia is typically manifested when the child first goes to school and has to cope with learning to read.According to him, a child with dyslexia, though often of average or above average intelligence, may have difficulty in grasping abstract concepts and in retelling a story. They may be slow at word recall and have difficulty in reading because of inverting letters or reading backwards. They may have to read a paragraph three or four times before they can grasp its content.Dr Lamki said that it is not uncommon for children with dyslexia to have other impairments or disabilities. ''The most common among these are attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyper-active disorder. The school drop-out rate of dyslexics can be a high as 35 per cent.''At workplaces, up to 20 per cent of workers may be dyslexic. Dyslexia has a negative impact on working practices and career progression but remains a poorly understood and often hidden disability. A total of 80 per cent of all people diagnosed with learning disabilities are dyslexic.''According to Prof Lamki, there is a dearth of empirical information on the prevalence of such learning disorders in Oman. ''There is no provision for remedial services and rehabilitation for children with dyslexia in the country or even culture-specific tools for diagnosing dyslexia. However, special education teachers are available in some private schools in Oman.They are able to give special attention to dyslexic pupils, helping them to cope with their learning disorder. These children are given more time to do tests. We need to implement these actions in the Ministry of Education's (MoE) public schools. The answer to managing dyslexia is not to get these children accommodated in mainstream schools with special support,'' he said.''In Oman, we need to take steps to educate the parents and the public,'' Prof Lamki said. ''The MoE, perhaps together with the Ministry of Health, needs to officially recognise dyslexia as a condition requiring special attention and provide resources for rehabilitation.''Prof Lamki said, ''We need more psychologists trained in diagnosing learning disorders and they will need the appropriate diagnostic tools,'' he said. Researchers from the College of Education and the College of Medicine at SQU have recently been given a grant from His Majesty's Strategic Research Fund to study dyslexia, specifically the authentication of diagnostic tests for dyslexia.
