Key elements – must do
‘Must do’ actions must be undertaken in all phases of humanitarian action when implementing health programming for personswith disabilities.
Participation
- Ensure that persons with disabilities, family members, and organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) actively participate in decision-making and in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating health programmes.
- In cooperation with persons with disabilities and OPDs, make health workers aware of the rights of persons with disabilities, including the intersection of disability with gender, age, migration status, religion and sexuality.
Addressing barriers
- Implement strategies to reduce stigma about disability. Make the community aware of disability. Establish peer-support groups that include persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities.
- To increase mutual understanding, counter misconceptions and myths, and foster cooperation, encourage persons with disabilities and health staff to dialogue, exchange ideas and share their knowledge.
- Make health facilities accessible to persons with disabilities. Promote initiatives to transport persons with disabilities to health facilities, widen entrances, improve signage, and generally facilitate movement.
- Communicate information on health in multiple accessible formats, taking into account the requirements of persons with hearing, visual, intellectual or psychosocial disabilities.
- Address socioeconomic barriers to health, such as lack of education and low income.
Empowerment and capacity development
- Strengthen OPDs’ health programming capacity. Enable them to participate in designing, implementing and monitoring health services.
- Involve OPD staff, self-advocates with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities, mental health service users, family members, and caregivers in trainings for health professionals on disability.
- Adopt informed consent procedures for medical and surgical decisions and data sharing (including referrals) to enable persons with disabilities to make decisions for themselves.
Data collection and monitoring
- Determine what data are available on the number of persons with disabilities. Assess the data’s accuracy and identify gaps. Where data are not available, use the 15 per cent global estimate.
- Run health assessments, surveys and surveillance tools to collect data on the health of persons with disabilities. Do so consistently, through all phases of the crisis. Disaggregate the data by sex, age and disability.
- Create clear referral systems across different services. Document and monitor their performance.
- Run an intersectional analysis to understand power imbalances based on gender, age and disability and how intersectionality affects access to financial resources, mobility and decision-making.