Access to Health Care Services for Persons with Physical and Sensory Disabilities in Ethiopia: The Case of Addis Ababa’s Yeka Sub-City

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Date

2021-08

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AAU

Abstract

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, the seat of the AU and a variety of regional and international organizations is a city where persons with disabilities continue to face everyday challenges especially lack of access to primary health care services. This thesis intends to scrutinize the issue of accessibility right to health care services in Ethiopia with a special reference to Addis Ababa’s Yeka Sub-City. Yeka sub-city has been chosenas a research area purposively considering the landscape, data availability and its being forestry and mountainous with long outer boundary line with rural woredas all of which are not suitable for PWDs. Compared to other Sub-Cities,Yeka Sub-City consists of low status residents who are not able to help persons with disabilities to access required services.PWDs, health professionals and some persons in the society have been selected applying purposive sampling to give the required data and information. PWDs consist of physical, visual, hearing and speech impairments. Health professionals consist of doctors, health officers, nurses and health assistants. Persons in the society include directors, officers and association leaders. A total of 60 participants of which, 34 male and 26 female has participated in the interviews and two focus group discussions. In the course of the research, international and regional human rights instruments, together with national legal frameworks, policies and strategies, which are relevant to the research issues as well as practical situations and implementations in health care centers have been observed and studied deeply. The research has also employed review of literatures, interview discussions, focus group discussionsand observations as data collection tools.In the research, it is realized and understood that the problem of accessibility to health care services to PWDs is more prevailing in Ethiopiadue to the negative impacts of barriers.Lack of monitoring mechanisms, ineffective enforcement mechanisms and failure to institutionalize disability issues aboutPWDs’ benefits and human rightscauses violations of their rights. The researcher analyzed the thesis using qualitative method and descriptive analysis and structured it organizing the required data and information.Additionally, the problem of accessibility to health care services for PWDs is attributed to the low level of information transmission in the community and lack of disaggregated legal frameworks, policies and strategies in accordance with each disability types. The health care service provision problem for PWDs is very high and complex in Addis Ababa and it is possible to imagine how it is even worse in rural areas of the country. Therefore, the country particularly the city administration, needs determined action to develop horizontal accessibility laws (laws which govern non-state or private actors on human rights), disaggregating disability types and develop convenient legal frameworks; design policies, strategies and guidelines; train and educate health professionals about human rights of PWDs, and create awareness integrating community based organizations. All these should be backed by adequate budget and effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to realize the access to health care services for persons with disabilities as perthe standards of international and regional human rights instruments, and national legal frameworks.

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