Voice of Disability Initiative (VDI) on Thursday in Abuja organized a One Day Sensitization workshop for healthcare workers on Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights of Women and Girls With Disabilities.
The Executive Director of VDI, Barr. Catherine Edeh, while speaking to The Qualitative Magazine (TQM) said that the sensitization is part of VDI project supported by Amplify Change that is a 18 months project.
She said that the exercise is an intervention towards VDI findings from the evidence gathering on Sexual and Reproductive Health of Women and girls with disabilities in the earlier part of the project, where VDI were able to find the problems and the agencies to get engage in order to enhance access to healthcare services by women and girls with disabilities.
She also said that the sensitization was to get relevant agencies understand the different kind of disability and multiple but peculiar challenges while accessing health care services. For instance, the deaf people have the challenge of communication and lack of sign language interpreter in the hospital have led to maternal death of some deaf women, no guide for the the blind people due to their challenges associated with vision while lack of accessibility facilities at the hospital has made it difficult for women with physical disabilities to access healthcare services which has lead to maternal death and child mortality.
She cited other challenges faced by women and girls with disabilities while accessing healthcare services such as the society discriminating against PWDs when they see disability as a curse and this has led to denial of access to persons with disabilities in all sphere of things in the society.
She expressed hope that the participants such as Medical Doctors who came from hospitals will step down the training and VDI will keep in contact with them and expects to see better healthcare services in the near future.
She informed that VDI will also follow up through sensitization visit to ascertain how they flaring and further promote SRHR.
Mr. Lawrence Idemudia, Director, Social Integration, National Commission for Persons with disabilities (NCPWD) who represented the Executive Secretary, NCPWD, James Lalu in his remark while commending VDI for the initiative informed the health workers that the issue of SRHR is no longer a matter of choice, it is now a matter of right so it must be implemented.
He urged them to take issues of PWDs so serious, use the acceptable terminologies while addressing PWDs and ensure that that they enjoy quality healthcare services in an equal basis with others.
One of the facilitators, Mr. Damian Ivom, during his presentation, highlighted the barriers to health services by Persons with disabilities and actions to be considered towards removing them. He also took the participants through definition of disability, the models of disability, and acceptable terminologies.
Barr. Florence Marcus who was also a facilitator took the participants through the legal framework of SRHR.
The Participants were drawn from different hospitals, NAPTIP, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Women Affairs, National Commission for Persons with disabilities (NCPWD) and some persons with disabilities including media.
Some of the key points from the presentation were;
- Health workers should see the SRHR as a right issue to understand the importance of the implementation
- They should work with relevant organizations to ensure constant training of health workers
- Health workers should partner with PWDs to understand their challenges for effective service delivery
- Health Workers should ensure proper enabling environment when it comes to issues of PWDs
- It was identified that reasons for lack of healthcare services are: stigma and discrimination, lack of disability related policy, lack of funding, and healthcare workers negative attitude.
- There should be more awareness creation on National Policy on SRHR with emphasis on women
- Health workers more capacity building to enhance their engagement and partnership with Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs).
