‘Don’t discriminate against persons with intellectual disability’
Parents of intellectually disabled (ID) persons have been advised to ensure that their children accessed proper healthcare regularly to better their life.
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The National Co-ordinator of Inclusion Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Mr Auberon Jeleel Odoom, said the discrimination faced by persons with ID and their relatives, in their bid to access healthcare, had caused a high mortality rate among persons with the disability.
He therefore, appealed to the media to educate the general public on issues relating to ID in the country.
“We recognise the media as a very important stakeholder in the whole process, and at every stage of the intervention process, we would want to urge them to disseminate the information we have gathered, and also to sensitise the public,” he said.
A baseline report in 2011 carried out by Inclusion Ghana indicated that persons with ID faced discrimination when assessing healthcare, accounting for the poor health status of such persons and even worse situations for those in the rural areas.
It also revealed that healthcare staff, as a result of their inability to respond to the different communication needs of persons with ID, mostly showed discriminatory and negative attitude towards them.
At a day’s workshop organised in Accra by Inclusion Ghana to train persons with ID and their parents on their rights in assessing healthcare, participants deliberated on how the challenges faced by persons with ID could be reduced.
A person is described as having an ID when he or she has a significantly below average intellectual functioning, which is regarded as an IQ below 70 and a deficiency in two or more adaptive areas such as learning, communication, social skills and self-care.
According to Mr Odoom, his outfit has put in place a health professional training to educate some health professionals to help them communicate better with persons with ID, and to also help them develop positive attitudes towards such patients.
He indicated that Inclusion Ghana would undertake a mass registration of persons with ID to help determine the disability rate in the country.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Rev. Father Sackey Addoo of the Akwatia Anglican Church and a parent of a child with disability, appealed to health personnel to pay equal attention to persons with ID and those who were normal who visited their health centres.
He also called on the public to stop the stigmatisation against persons with disability, adding that “One would not be infected with the disability when he or she interacts with any person with ID”.
Rev. Addoo lauded the initiative of Inclusion Ghana, and appealed to the government to come to the aid of persons with ID.
Daily Graphic/Ghana
