World Down Syndrome day celebrations in 2006
A brief history of World Down Syndrome Day By Sarah Paterson-Hamlin
Ordinarily, this edition of CHAT21 would be packed full of images and stories from how World Down Syndrome Day (WDSD) was celebrated all over Aotearoa. Of course, once again things were a little different this year, and largely curtailed due to the Omicron outbreak, and the need to keep everyone but especially our immune-compromised loved ones safe. In place of this, we’ve put together a little potted history of the day and how it came to be that we celebrate together with communities all over the world on 21 March every year. Origins It was at the UN General Assembly in December 2011 that World Down Syndrome Day was first formally declared as a global celebration, but groups around the world had been connecting on that date since at least 2006. Why 21 March? 21/3 represents three copies of chromosome 21 of course! And you can’t beat a good science pun in my view.
You could argue that the first public celebrations of the Down syndrome community date back to the performances at Normansfield from 1879 onwards, where Langdon Down – the scientist whose name the English-speaking world attaches to the syndrome – and his wife, Mary, put on performances both for and including their charges. It’s hard to know for sure, but the French have a pretty good claim on having come up with the 21.3 thing. In English, Trisomy 21 is used to describe the most common form of Down syndrome, and doesn’t refer to Mosaic or Translocation Down syndrome, but in French, ‘trisomie 21’ describes all three, so it’s logical that the Francophone world were the first to hit on the 21st March date. L’ARFT (Association Française pour l a Re c h e rc h e s u r l e Tr i s o m i e 2 1 o r French Association for Down Syndrome Research) organised a conference on that date in 2005. It was likely as a result of this that Down Syndrome International (DSi) chose that date as a focal point for their increasingly global activities, and how the World Health Organisation (WHO) came to recognise the date in 2007. A WDSD website was created in 2006 on behalf of DSi, which made it easier for Down Syndrome Associations (DSAs) around the world to see what each other were up to. It was this collaboration, predominantly led by the DSAs of Brazil
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