RIGHTS-UGANDA: Bearing the Pains of Double Discrimination

• by Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi (kampala)
• Thursday, March 25, 2010
• Inter Press Service

They often face stigma, discrimination, violence and absolute poverty, but their greatest challenge is mainly centred on reproductive health and rights issues, says Beatrice Guzu, executive secretary of the National Organisation of Women with Disabilities in Uganda.

'In addition to the impacts of physical, mental, intellectual and sensor impairments, we are double discriminated (against), first as women, and then as disabled,' Guzu says in an interview with IPS.

According to Guzu, while women empowerment and gender equality strategies emphasise the importance of addressing discrimination against women, such strategies do not target women with disabilities.

For instance, Uganda has a disability policy and planning framework — including the People with Disabilities Act. The country is also signatory to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which calls for protection of the rights of people living with disabilities. And this is also emphasised in the Uganda Constitution. But there are no deliberate efforts to incorporate reproductive health services into such legislation.

Because of this, there are no adequate sanitation facilities or even a single health centre in the country that has disability-friendly delivery beds for expectant mothers with disabilities.

The beds are too high and non adjustable to offer support surface for labour and delivery, yet by the nature of some disabilities, expectant women may need caesarean section births, says Guzu.

'The maternity sanitation is very poor, yet this is a (physically impaired) woman who may need to crawl into the bathroom. So such an environment can discourage her from using health centres and instead she decides to deliver at home with the traditional birth attendant,' Guzu says.

Midwives have also not been sensitised enough on how to handle expectant mothers with disabilities, she says.

However, midwives say they also face their own share of challenges while dealing with women with disabilities, varying on the nature of disability.

'For women with physical disability, there is a challenge of movement and a challenge in the delivery facility like appropriate beds,' says Janet Obuni President, Uganda National Association of Nurses and Midwives.

She says lack of special delivery beds equally affects the midwife’s health because she has to bend or squat on the floor to deliver the child, causing physical problems and discomfort to her.

'Most of our hospitals have not taken people with disabilities into account. We do not have ramps for those on wheel chairs or for moving patients from one place to another; we also do not have toilet facilities specific for them and that is a very big challenge for the midwife,' Obuni tells IPS.

Midwives also face a challenge of communicating with women with disabilities, especially those who are visually impaired and deaf.

'This is because we do not have the training to enable us pass information to these mothers on how they should take care of themselves during pregnancy, and giving them the vital health information during antenatal clinics on how to take care of their babies and themselves after delivering,' Obuni says.

She proposes a need not only to train health workers — particularly midwives - on how to communicate with women with disabilities but to also educate mothers with disabilities on how to access reproductive health services.

'We need to create awareness among the population that every mother has a right to access quality and skilled reproductive health services,' Obuni says.

Sexual violence<p> But reproductive health rights of women with disabilities are not violated only during child birth. Sexual exploitation is another problem which subsequently leads to unwanted pregnancy and complications during child birth. It also increases their chances of acquiring sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS, health experts say.

'Women with disabilities are vulnerable to sexual violence because many in society believe that they are asexual and thus are free from HIV/AIDS,' State of Uganda’s Population report 2008 says.

Moreover, the report says, these women are also often left out of reproductive health sensitisation and awareness programmes because the providers also consider them asexual. Consequently, girls with disabilities suffer from sexually transmitted infections without access to counselling and treatment because they are always kept at home.

'They (girls) are easily taken advantage of because of their (disability) status. Taking care of them is hard and most parents ignore them when they are sick,' says ‘Rapid Sexual and Reproductive Health Assessment in Northern Uganda’ a 2006 study by United Nations Population Fund.

Government insists that its national programmes are all-inclusive. 'Our national policy on disability emphasises inclusiveness of all types of disabilities. We are looking at non-discrimination, and as a result we also develop programmes which are gender sensitive rather than disability sensitive,' says Herbert Baryayebwa, Commissioner for the Elderly and Disable in the ministry of labour, gender and social development.

However, people with disabilities say, in spite of these ‘all-inclusive’ frameworks, they are still being marginalised, not only in national development programmes but even at the international level like the Millennium Development Goals which have no mention of people living with disabilities in any of its targets.

'At the moment, not much is really being done in integrating people living with disabilities in the development process,' Guzu says.

The situation above is aggravated by lack of national disability statistics. For instance, the national Human Development Report and Millennium Development Goals progress reports have no mention of people with disabilities, hindering government’s capacity to come up with development programmes for this vulnerable group who constitute 18 percent of Uganda’s 30 million people, according to June 2008 figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement