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.