Studies of children in developing countries. How soon can we prevent neurodisability in childhood?

Neurodevelopmental disability is a functional limitation due to a neurological disorder with an onset early in life and occurs across a range of domains: cognition, movement, seizure disorders, vision, hearing, and behaviour.Disability can occur within a single domain or involve more than one domain in the case of multiple disabilities.Disabilities can be caused by a variety of etiological insults, many of which are preventable at a primary, secondary, or tertiary level.Neurodevelopmental disabilities are an important but largely unaddressed problem in low-income countries (Durkin et al. 1991).For this paper, the term 'developing countries' includes low-income countries with few professional and institutional health resources and inadequate infrastructure to deliver known effective preventive or rehabilitative measures nationally.It is understood that higher-income countries may also fail to address the challenges faced in preventing disability or in effective rehabilitation.Though many of the causes of neurodevelopmental disabilities in children in developing countries are identical to those in developed countries, there are causes which have an impact solely in developing countries such as cerebral malaria or trachoma.The prevalence of a disabilitywill increase or decrease in any given population depending on a variety of factors: for example, age distribution of the population, prevalence of the causal agents, availability of preventive measures or of initial treatment, and the longevity of those at risk.As a result, the epidemiology of neurodevelopmental disabilities show a markedly different pattern in developing countries than in the developed world.