Covid-19 fight leaves out persons with disabilities
A Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) survey has established that the Covid-19 response has left out persons with disabilities, thereby negatively impacting their rights to education, health, economic activity, liberty and movement, employment and access to justice during the pandemic.
This is happening against a background of calls to create a disability-inclusive Malawi for equal participation in development championed by government.
MHRC conducted a qualitative study with disabled peoples organisations, disabled individuals and over eight major health facilities nationwide
Published in its end of year newsletter titled Standing Up For Human Rights Against All Odds, the commission established that the disabled were not consulted and involved in the planning, design and execution of the Covid-19 response strategy.
Reads the report: “People with disabilities have not been included as a priority group to access the services.”
It also says health officials confirmed that the entire response was not disability inclusive.
“There were no special arrangement for people with disability, officers were not trained to deal with certain disabilities, makeshift clinics were not disability-friendly and information was not packaged to meet all types of disabilities,” it reads further.
Among other findings, the report also found that there were no efforts to disseminate health information using accessible formats, and that persons with disabilities had no representation in all clusters responsible for designing and implementing of the Covid-19 response mechanism.
According to the statement, most testing and vaccination services are not easily accessible and affordable to persons with disabilities due to hidden costs of travel to available centres.
Other human rights violations that the research zeroed-in on include long outstanding cases of national interest that remain unresolved, including the killing of MacDonald Masambuka, who was living with albinism.
MHRC has since called for a complete redesign of the Covid-19 response with consultation with the disabled and that hand washing points, vaccination sites and isolation facilities should be accessible to the disabled persons.
