Closing reproductive health service gaps for women with disabilities, our goal —PLAN

EXECUTIVE Director of PLAN Health Advocacy and Development Foundation (PLAN Foundation), Mr Obatunde Oladapo, said its 3-day training for health workers was to ensure that the gap in sexual and reproductive health services for women with disabilities is bridged in Oyo State.

The training is part of the Eliminating Multiple Barriers to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services among Young Girls and Women with Disabilities in Oyo State, Nigeria (Embassy Project), to build capacity of 30 healthcare workers from 15 facilities to be designated for disability-friendly healthcare services.

Oladapo stated that health workers must understand the peculiarities of women with disabilities and ensure that they are not marginalised or ostracised in the process of providing services to every other person.

“Women with disabilities are not left out. Sexual and reproductive health rights, information, and services are all human rights. The more we continue to mar-ginalise them, the more we are trampling on their rights,” he added.

He said the 15 facilities to be designated for disability-friendly healthcare services were picked in collaboration with the Oyo State Primary Health Care Board and the Oyo State Agency for Per-sons with Disabilities.

“We discovered that there are multiple barriers at different levels to access to ser-vices: structural barriers in facilities, systemic barriers in the way things are done, and social barriers with regards to the attitude of people and attitude of healthcare workers.

“One indication is that we have to keep reminding people that persons with disabilities are human beings. Also, in many things we do in our society, we tend to discriminate against persons with disabilities.

“So, we are trying to plug everywhere that we could so that women with disabilities will not be left out in terms of access to sexual and reproductive health services in the state.

“Now the structures and the facilities alone cannot ensure this. Therefore we have to train healthcare workers, two in each of these facilities, to be ready to receive women with disabilities and provide those services to them.”

The executive director of the Primary Health Care and Health Management Cen-tre (PRiHEMAC), Dr Martins Ogundeji, said in his presentation on “Disability and the Community,” it is community members’ responsibilities to promote accessibility to health and reproductive health services and to ensure that the myths and misconceptions about disabilities are done away with.