In Ghana Persons with disabilities
often have difficulty in receiving proper healthcare they need compared to
other citizen who do not have disabilities.
When compared to the general
population, persons with disabilities have lower life expectancy, higher
morbidity, and more difficulty finding and obtaining healthcare in Ghana.
The Ghana Disability Forum, an
intellectual based and advocacy grouping at its midweek discussions, highlighted
those concern to push for action and reforms in the healthcare sector.
The theme of the discussion was “health delivery system and persons with disabilities”.
It came to light that, there is
very limited evidence on the organisation of healthcare services for persons with
disability as there are currently no well‐designed studies focusing on
organising the health services of persons with disability and concurrent
physical problems.
Also, there are very few studies
of organizational interventions targeting persons with disabilities and the
results of those that were found need corroborative.
Ghana Disability Forum called for
an urgent need for high‐quality health services research to identify optimal
health services for persons with disabilities.
The Forum called for immediate establishment
of active sign language specialists in the hospitals, need assistive tool to
make the health environment disability friendly, National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA)
must take a look at PWDs and how they can be supported in terms of cost,
Encourage more PWDs to enroll in health institutions and contact other NGOs
that provide assistive devices to help PWDS.
The
call by Ghana Disability Forum is a wake-up call for government of Ghana, NGOs
and policy formulators to urgently look at the need for high‐quality health
services research to identify optimal health services for persons with disabilities
in Ghana.
One
of the biggest challenges persons disabilities in Ghana face is accessing unfriendly
nature of healthcare infrastructure.
Most
of the discussants lamented that most healthcare facilities in Ghana lack
ramps, wheelchairs, disability-friendly delivery beds, appropriate separate
toilets for PWDs and sign language interpreters to assist in examination tables,
medication and healthcare providers’insensitivity and lack of knowledge.
Several accounts of the Forum member indicated that some healthcare providers were not only
rude and insensitive but also they appeared ill-prepared to address the needs
of persons with disabilities because
most health professionals were not trained to understand disability and to
provide care to persons with disabilities in Ghana.
Source: Seth Addi/TodayGhanaNews
