Prince Sultan bin Salman, president of the Board of Trustees of the Prince Salman Center for Disability Research (PSCDR), talked extensively with Al-Riyadh newspaper on the center as it celebrated its 20th anniversary last week.

The prince said PSCDR crowned its achievements by launching a series of health, cultural, and social programs. These raised public awareness about the need to deal with disabled people in a scientific and sympathetic manner, to ease their social integration.

“PSCDR’s most notable achievement is the launch of an early detection program that succeeded in preventing 600 cases of disability over the past many years,” the prince said.

The Ministry of Health is currently implementing PSCDR’s early disability detection program in all provinces in the Kingdom.

Another comprehensive program to ensure simplified access to disabled persons to education, jobs, and financing facilities has been submitted for approval of the Council of Ministers, he said.

“PSCDR adopted the National System for Disability Care with the collaboration of a number of government departments, educational establishments and charity agencies. The system offers a set of rights to disabled people. The center’s achievements also include launching the Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Program for Advanced Research in Disability. This runs five research programs on genetic code, genetic treatment, stem cell treatment and bio-electronic chips, nanotechnology, computer and robotics research and auto-control devices,” the prince said.

The center is planning to launch a charity endowment program. Crown Prince Salman has allocated 7,233 sq. meters of land at the Diplomatic District in Riyadh for a charity endowment-building project.

The cost of this project is estimated at SR 60 million, which the center hopes to cover through its founding members, donations and investments.

“The center has become a charity establishment to prevent and cure disability scientifically in line with its founding motto of ‘science to benefit people.’ The motto underscores the need to build a scientific base to tackle the problems caused by disability and control its damaging effects on individuals, families and the society and raise the level of rehabilitation efforts. The center also aims to track and make early interventions to stop the occurrence of disability and assist people to overcome their disability with the help of research,” said the prince.

The center is currently implementing a national survey on mental health in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.

Convincing society of the importance of conducting scientific research on disability was one of the major challenges the center faced at the time of its founding 20 years ago.

“When I joined as a member of the board of directors of the Disabled Children’s Association (DCA) in 1989, I felt that it is not enough just to set up a center for the care of the disabled. The issue was how could we eliminate the cause of disability. Based on that idea the new strategy of the DCA was chalked out. We focused on three major points: providing comprehensive and specialized service to disabled children for treatment, education and rehabilitation, and helping the child’s family in dealing with the disability,” the prince said.

The strategy also included the creation of social awareness about adopting preventive measures against the occurrence of disability and building up a scientific base for the disability care programs by setting up a center for research and studies.

“When we presented the idea to the crown prince, who was then Riyadh governor and asked him to submit the idea to King Fahd, the crown prince said the idea should be submitted to the king after preparing it as a complete project. He also made a SR 10 million personal donation to launch the center,” the prince said.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, PSCDR instituted a new international prize to promote local, regional and international studies and research in the field of various types of disabilities.

The prize bears the name of Crown Prince Salman, the supreme president of the center and its first benefactor. It will be offered in three areas such as improving the environment of intellectual creativity and scientific excellence for disability research in order to find new ways and means, solutions and alternatives that will stop disability or lighten the suffering of the disabled people and their families.

The prize also seeks to drive deep the concept of scientific research on disability besides spreading the culture of research locally, regionally and internationally, the prince said.

“The Crown Prince Salman prizes will be awarded every two years in three major branches: health and medical sciences, educational studies, and social and rehabilitation sciences. Only in the initial year it will be for three years. The winners in each section will also be given a certificate and a medal apart from a SR 250,000 cash award,” the prince said.