adminLovemore Zigara Midlands Correspondent
ACTIVISTS working with people with disabilities have called on the government to roll out HIV/Aids programmes which cater for people with disabilities.
A local non-governmental organisation working with the disabled on reproductive issues, Disability, HIV and Aids Trust (DHAT) has challenged the government to incorporate sign language and the use of Braille in reaching out to people with disabilities.
DHAT youth programmes co-ordinator Edwin Ndlovu said most of the people with disabilities like the blind and the hearing impaired did not have access to information on sexual reproductive issues.
“People with disabilities have little or no knowledge on sexual reproductive health because they don’t have information that’s being accessed by everyone else, therefore, they’re actually relegated to the margins of society.
“There’s need for the authorities to provide some of the materials in Braille and sign language for the benefit of people with disabilities as this has been the main hindrance for them to access such information,” he said.
Sindiso Ndlovu, a programmes co-ordinator for Students and Youth Working on Reproductive Health Action Team (Saywhat) which works with students in higher and tertiary institutions, said most of the materials on HIV/Aids in tertiary institutions were not compatible for people with disabilities.
“Most of the programmes aren’t tailor-made to include students with disabilities at tertiary institutions. Most of the tertiary institutions don’t have either a policy or a clear programme to say how we give students with disabilities information on sexual reproductive health.
“Most of the information at these institutions isn’t compatible and the health workers there aren’t skilled enough to address issues of students with disabilities. You take for instance a condom demonstration to a visually impaired person. It needs a special skill for one to be able to execute it properly,” he said.
He said students living with disabilities lacked access to information pertaining to sexual reproductive health as most activities and facilities at tertiary institutions do not cater for them.
National Aids Council (Nac) monitoring and evaluation director Amon Mpofu said that the organisation had tasked the National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (Nascoh) to compile a report on the need of people with disabilities to be adopted by Nac.
“We’ve realised that the disabled are one of our key populations and currently we’re working with Nascoh to have their input in the programmes that we’re running as Nac. We’ve discovered that some of them can’t read so they need Braille and some of them can’t hear and would need sign language.
“We need to develop Braille and most skills to reach to these people. We’ve also discovered that most of these people are also discriminated in terms of education as some didn’t access good education. So these are the things that we’ve found but we need the input from people with disabilities themselves.”
He said Nac had already printed material in Braille and was in the process of printing material in sign language so that these people with disabilities are prioritised.
According to a report by Nascoh, more than 1,2 million people in Zimbabwe are disabled; of which 300,000 are HIV positive.
The report notes that instructions for the use of condoms had never been distributed in Braille for people with visual impairments nor in sign language for those with hearing impairment.
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