Awareness in Context of own Disabilities in Rural Communities with Extreme Poverty - Abstract
Being differently abled is a complex phenomenon, which reflects interaction between features of a person’s body, society in which he or she lives. Such persons are restricted in performing daily activities because of complex interrelating factors, some pertaining to self, others to environment and social/political arrangements in the communities to which they belong. Objectives: To collect information in the context of disabilities in rural communities with extreme poverty in hilly, forestry region. Material and Methods: After the ethics committee’s approval information was collected from differently abled persons about their own disability, also from those who could have known about disabilities of these differently abled rural people living in extreme poverty in a hilly remote region. It was not a planned study but findings of information collected for services made us share. Information was collected in 100 villages. Neither all houses were visited nor a randomized survey was done. Information was collected by person responsible by identifying persons with disability for services planned with help of Nurse Midwives (NM) of health facility created, responsible for mother child care in villages, Sub Centers’ NM, Community Health workers (CHW) etc. Total 226 identified disabled persons and 381, those persons, family members, CHW, NM etc. who were believed to be knowledgeable about the differently abled and were available. Results: Overall of 226 differently abled persons, only 4 were of less than 10 years, youngest 6 years, eldest was 44 years. Information did not include visually disabled as separate work was going on for visually disabled. It was found that one third of disabled had hearing disability and two third mainly neuromuscular disabilities .No one was from upper and middle upper-economic class and beyond secondary school education. Many did not talk about complaints also. Conclusions: In rural communities with scarce resources, people lived with disabilities not really realizing about their own disabilities, even persons around them were apathetic. A lot of research is needed, a system for identifying people with disabilities, whatever possible help and awareness creation.