Chronicle Editor
Gibson Mhaka, Senior Features Reporter
“I FELT like I was losing my mind when I went for VCT (Voluntary HIV Counselling and Testing) and one of the counsellors asked me — ‘who infected you with HIV?’ They don’t expect people with disabilities to be sexually active and as a result we are excluded from community gatherings where Government workers or non-governmental organisations hand out condoms or educate people about the virus,” said Angela through an interpreter at her house in Bulawayo’s Mzilikazi suburb.
Throwing her hands in the air in disdain she continued: “We can go to the hospital but there are no sign-language interpreters.
There is also no detailed information on HIV and Aids for us despite the fact that we are also dying from the pandemic.
The situation is even worse particularly to us women as we are vulnerable to abuse and abandonment since we are often dependent on others for care and support”.
The story of Angela (33) who is struggling to obtain information on HIV and Aids is confirmation that although there has been significant progress around the country in recent years towards providing equal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programmes, such progress has excluded people with disabilities, particularly the deaf who can only understand sign language.
They are often overlooked in HIV prevention, testing and treatment programming and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) services. According to Angela, deaf people living with HIV face the double burden of stigma and discrimination.
“To most people in the deaf community, HIV is a death sentence as they cannot access HIV and SRHR services due to stigma and discrimination.
There is need for Government to provide reliable information on HIV for deaf people who at the moment are relying on secondary information from relatives,” she said.
Although HIV-related data on people with disabilities is extremely limited, according to the National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH), Zimbabwe has a population of almost 1,8 million people living with disabilities.
People with disabilities are at high risk of being infected with HIV due to lack of education and resources to ensure safe sex and being vulnerable to violence and rape.
The situation is even worse for the deaf due to the language barrier. There is also a wrong perception that the hearing and speech impaired people and those with other disabilities are not sexually active hence they don’t need education on HIV and Aids.
The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has exposed some glaring inequalities which are in stark contrast to what is reflected in the international and regional human rights treaties including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
CRPD obligates governments to provide persons with disabilities the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided to other persons, including population-based public health programmes. This means that persons with disabilities should be able to access HIV services just like any other citizen.
Covid-19 has also exposed the shortcomings of Zimbabwe’s health sector in addressing the challenges being faced by the hearing and speech-impaired community.
For example, the platforms being used to communicate how Covid-19 is spread, how it is prevented and other related issues are rarely accessible to them. This is despite the fact that sign language is one of the 16 officially recognised languages in Zimbabwe.
Speaking at the National Aids Council (Nac) workshop for sports journalists in Chinhoyi recently on the topic — “Hearing and Impairment Challenges During Pandemics such as HIV and Covid-19”, advocate for linguistic rights of minority languages and Sunrise Sign Language Academy chairman Mr Douglas Mapeta said at times some terms used by healthcare workers were not understood by the deaf.
Mr Mapeta said as such the hearing-impaired lacked knowledge on the cause, transmission and treatment of HIV and Aids. He said terms such as positive and negative were not known and understood by most deaf people.
“Information about HIV and Aids are not accessible to the deaf because many of them have not been to school. Writing down as a communication tool is futile because they cannot read and write,” said Mr Mapeta. He said the hearing impaired were also being left out of the conversations on the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Many couldn’t access their medication due to lockdown restrictions as updates weren’t communicated in sign language.
Even TV and radio stations are also not user friendly to the deaf who are not benefiting from important campaigns such as those meant to fight Covid-19 and HIV/Aids pandemics,” said Mr Mapeta.
He appealed to the media and society to use disability friendly language adding that there was also a need for journalists, health workers, teachers, police and social workers to learn sign language.
What is however, encouraging is that since 2018, the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s Aids and TB Unit in conjunction with Nac and Unicef have been teaching health workers sign langauge.
Disability rights activist and Human Rights and Advocacy Officer at African Union of the Blind Mr Abraham Mateta also concurred with Mr Mapeta saying there is a need to teach health-care providers sign language to enable them to communicate with the hearing-impaired.
“There are cultural and attitudinal barriers especially when it comes to communicating issues of HIV and Aids to the deaf.
In some instances, persons with disabilities in general are viewed as ‘people of God’ who do not indulge in sex,” said Mr Mateta.
He said HIV programmes must be disability-responsive, which means they need to address the needs of people with disabilities.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO) in most countries hearing care is still not integrated into national health systems and accessing care services is therefore challenging for deaf.
In its first World Report on Hearing, released in March last year WHO also warned that nearly 2,5 billion people worldwide or one in four people will be living with some degree of hearing loss by 2050.
A health worker who requested not to be named for professional reasons said language barrier was a big challenge faced by those providing services to the deaf.
Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Zimbabwe country programme manager, Dr Ernest Chikwati said there were few health workers who are able to communicate with the deaf.
AHF Zimbabwe is supporting the Ministry of Health and Child care in establishing Centres of Excellences (COE) with One-Stop HIV and Aids facilities which provide quality and affordable health services for PLHIV.
“The issue of people with disabilities facing difficulties in accessing care is something we identified long back. Most of our key staff can now use sign language but we want to train more,” said Dr Chikwati.
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