The administrative population report on children with developmental delays in Taiwan, 2003 through 2007.
Taiwan’s registry shows early identification is climbing, but geography still decides who actually gets help.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked at Taiwan’s national registry for kids with developmental delays. They counted every child listed from 2003 to 2007.
Doctors, clinics, and hospitals send the names. The paper shows which age groups and which places sent the most reports.
What they found
More babies and toddlers (0-2 years) showed up in the registry each year. Medical settings were the main door into the system.
The jump was biggest for the youngest kids, hinting that doctors are catching delays earlier.
How this fits with other research
Lai et al. (2011) used the same registry and added two new slices: boys vs. girls and city vs. farm. They show the same upward line, so the trend is real.
Lin et al. (2012) asked the next question: once a child is listed, does he actually get early-intervention visits? They found big gaps—some regions serve 2.5 times more kids than others.
Lai et al. (2013) widened the lens to all childhood disabilities. Autism numbers shot up fastest, backing the idea that wider awareness—not just better counting—drives the rise.
Why it matters
If you work in Taiwan, expect more referrals from pediatricians. Screen early, especially in rural counties where uptake still lags. If you work elsewhere, use the Taiwan story to push for medical-home screening in your own state—more names on the list only help if they lead to services.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper was a population study with developmental delays and it included an examination of the trends the overtime change trend and reported channels of this group of people in Taiwan. We analyzed data for the present study mainly from the Department of Statistics, Ministry of the Interiors, Taipei, Taiwan: "Number of early intervention for children with developmental delays in Taiwan" from 2003 through 2007. The reported number of children with developmental delays slightly increased from 13,231 to 14,250 (increase rate=7.7%) from the year of 2003 through 2007 in Taiwan. More than one-half of children with developmental delays were reported during the age 3-5 years. Aged 0-2 group has the highest increasing reported numbers in the previous 5 years which changed dramatically increased from 4139 (31.3%) in 2003 to 6201 (43.5%) in 2007 (increase rate=49.8%). The medical care setting was the main reported channel of the children with developmental delays and the results also showed that the reported prevalence of the aged 0-2 developmentally delayed children was 57.4-102.2 per 10,000 children; aged 3-5 was 79.0-105.1 per 10,000 children from the year 2003-2007 in Taiwan. The present concluded that early intervention based on the precise affected population would provide important supports for families of children with developmental delays. Therefore, the health care system should be strengthened to increase the proportion of children identified at the earlier age and to decrease the variability in the age at identification for most of the conditions of children with developmental delays.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2008.06.004