About Us

Origins

In 1992, Dr. SD Singh (Jabalpur), Dr. Kamna Jain (Indore) & Dr Nandini Mundkur (Bangalore) started a small group of pediatricians with a common interest in children with disabilities and their management which used to meet during conferences doing workshops. The next big turn in history came soon when Childhood Disability Group was formed in 1992. The group had a great presence at all national IAP conferences with a wide variety of topics like cerebral palsy, learning disability, autism which were not in the limelight at that time.

The initial important stalwarts and members who supported and took the cause forward were – Dr MKC Nair, Dr S S Kamath, Dr Hanumantha Rao, Dr Pratibha Singhi, Dr Veena Kalra, Dr Nandini Mundkur, Dr Madhuri Kulkarni, Dr Shabina Ahmed, Dr Abraham Paul, Dr Jeeson Unni, Dr Sunanda Reddy (to name a few) and these crusaders continued with their efforts in improving the quality of life of special children by various ways.

Early days

First National Conferences of the Childhood Disability Group was held at Bhubaneshwar in 2004 and since then have been regularly held every year. The conferences have always highlighted the needs of special children as their themes and have been successful in spreading awareness as well as attracting young pediatricians into the chapter fold.

Newborn hearing screening program by Dr Abraham Paul, Poor Scholastic Performance Programme by Dr Jeeson Unni are some of the programs started by the chapter members which have been great successes.

Metamorphosis

The chapter membership numbers have continued to increase with time and the ‘Childhood Disability Group’ transformed into the ‘IAP Chapter of Neuro developmental Pediatrics’in 2015. The Chapter has been working actively towards the process of increasing awareness about the different aspects of special needs children among pediatricians, policy makers as well as general public. IAP national guidelines on Newborn hearing screening, Autism, ADHD and Learning Disability were published in 2017
Declared as the second best chapter during the first year as a chapter during Pedicon 2016 and has been adjudged the third best chapter for the year 2021.