Today, which is the international day of disabled persons, comes at a time when language and physical barriers continue to affect people living with disability.
Commemorations during the 18th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) 2015 will be done at the Disability Zone in the Community Village later on during the day.
This year’s theme is: Inclusion matters: access and empowerment of people of all abilities.
“The intersection of World Aids Day on December 1 and the World Disability Day on December 3, provides an opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of the global AIDS response for the 1 billion people,15 percent of the world’s population, who live with a physical, sensory (i.e blindness, deafness), intellectual or mental health impairment. Unfortunately, there is little encouraging to report,” read a statement from the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC) HIV and Disability Task Group.
Arguably a greater barrier than stigma and prejudice is ignorance of what it means to live with a disability. Need for greater awareness extends to government and public health officials, health providers and community outreach workers, the very people charged with ensuring that HIV education and services, and more broadly, sexual and reproductive health, universal health coverage and gender based violence (GBV) programmes reach everyone.
In an interview with Dr Aida Zerbo from Handicap International in Senegal and also the manager of Project Access, a plethora of challenges that threaten matters of inclusivity were highlighted.
“In Africa, when it comes to access to sexual reproductive health and rights, there is no available information which in the long run fuels misconceptions such as AIDS being a myth and that it is curable. Without readily available, adequate and inclusive information, people living with disabilities are the faced with a big challenge of access health services.
“In the few instances where information could be there, challenges of language, physical and basic communication barriers make it impossible for disabled people to interact directly with health services providers. At the end of the end, there is no way of knowing if one has received the right services for the problem they have,” she said.
Dr Zerbo also mentioned that the right to privacy for people living with disability was violated by most service providers owing to communication barriers.
“When it comes to counselling, before or after testing, so many times we have heard and experienced cases whereby the confidentiality of disabled persons are broken due to the introduction of a third party who plays the role of the interpreter because most health services providers lack inclusive training on how to deal with such people,” she added.
The annual observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons was proclaimed in 1992, by the United Nations General Assembly resolution. The observance of the Day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilise support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities. It also seeks to increase awareness of gains to be derived from the integration of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.
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