China-Sweden Partnership: Areas of Ongoing Development in Intellectual Disabilities.

At the initiative of the Government of the People's Republic of China, a letter of intent concerning a joint undertaking for studying children with intellectual disability in China was formulated together with the Swedish Government's Ministry of Social Affairs in the early 1990s. The Swedish Board of Health and Welfare invited Uppsala University to set up a consulting team through the Centre for Disability Research. On the Chinese side, the task was given to China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF), whose overriding task is the representation of and guarding the legal rights of persons with disabilities. Under the auspice of the CDPF, researchers from China and Sweden jointly identified three areas of work: iodine deficiency, developmental screening, and rehabilitation. This article describes the project's activities within the Sino-Swedish Project, initiated in 1995. The Sino-Swedish Project was implemented in the least developed and consequently poorest western/northwestern interior parts of the country and overall work was carried out on a county-level (i.e., target areas were predominately rural albeit located in townships and villages). The experiences gained have formed the basis for further implementation throughout the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]