WORLD DISABILTY DAY (3rd Dec)
Sunday, November 30, 2008
In past decades there is marked improvement in health facilities and diagnostics scale, still there is not much drop in disability statistics. It may be because of better awareness and availability of rehabilitation services. But, disability is still one of the biggest challenges in front of our country. Disability not only affects the person and family but it affects the country as a whole. The country which have small in number but productive population always perform better than a country which have a large population and less productive people. Having a person with disability in family is always challenging as it requires a lot of financial, personnel and time resources. Disability becomes more severe and complex if it is combined with poverty.
The PWD Act 1995 advocates for Equal Opportunity, Full participation and Protection of rights, but still it has reached to couple of disabled and benefited them. I am sure that 50% of disabled may not be knowing about the policies and concessions allowed for them and how to avail them. In our country disability is still considered as a stigma to family and society. As per our beliefs disability is because of our bad “Karma” or ill deeds of our previous life. Lack of proper channels for dissemination of information and poor education among disabled is one major reason. The status of information, awareness and facilities are further poor in rural areas than urban. Lack of preventive education and expensive rehabilitation services make the treatment for disabled hard. At a large scale the facilities and opportunities are not available for most of disabled. Barrier free environment is not commonly seen in most of the shopping centres, public places, bus stands and other tourist places.
Pre natal counselling and care, Early diagnosis and Early Intervention is still not available to 20% of population. Because of increased demands and less umber of qualified professionals makes the basic services expensive.
Government facilities are not up to mark and can’t cater the services of such a big number and for more then 50% can’t avail the services on private sector. In this scenario the role of NGO and NPO becomes important where they can collaborate and network among themselves and with Govt so that a large population can be targeted. Other important area is education and awareness about sanitation, healthy practices and prenatal counseling should be given more emphasis. It is estimated that 50% of chances of developing disability can be reduce with preventive measures.
A little dedicated effort on preventive aspect, standardisation of services and rehabilitation, mandatory early intervention services and better education, collaboration of various NGO and govt agencies working in same area and sensitization in community for better acceptance can really improve the quality of a disabled person in community.
Posted byNeeti at 12:50 AM
Labels: disability