Access to Services and Barriers faced by People with Disabilities: A Quantitative Survey

Nathan Grills , Lawrence Singh , Hira Pant , Jubin Varghese , GVS Murthy , Monsurul Hoq , Manjula Marella
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5463/dcid.v28i2.615
Submitted: 2020-09-14 11:28:04
Published: 2017-08-22

Purpose: In low- and middle-income countries, reliable and disaggregated disability data on prevalence, participation and barriers is often not available. This study aimed to estimate disability prevalence, determine associated socio-demographic factors and compare access in the community between people with and without disability in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand, India, using the Rapid Assessment of Disability Survey.

Methods: A cross-sectional population-based survey was conducted on a sample of 2431 adults, selected using a two-stage cluster randomised sampling technique. The survey comprised an interviewer-administered household survey and an individual survey measuring disability, wellbeing and participation.  For each person with disability, an age and sex-matched control (without disability) was selected. In addition to prevalence, the difference in participation and barriers faced by people with and without disability were analysed.

Results and Conclusions: The prevalence of disability was 6.8% (95% CI 5.8-7.8) with significant associations with age, sex, economic status, education and employment. Psychosocial distress (4.8%) and mobility impairment (2.7%) were the most common disabilities identified. The study showed that people with disabilities had significantly less access to services than those without disability, and the barriers reported most often were lack of information, transport and physical inaccessibility.

Keywords

Disability prevalence accessibility barriers to access disability measurement

Authors

Nathan Grills

Associate Professor Nathan Grills is a Public Health Physician and NHMRC post-doctoral fellow who works largely in India, on disability, non-communicable diseases and health curriculum development and training. He has worked as a Public Health Fellow (Dept. of Health) and with CDC & WHO on HIV and civil society partnerships after completing his MPH and DPhil at Oxford University. He has international experience in Africa, Fiji, East Timor, PNG, Bangladesh and Nepal. He currently facilitates a network of programs that work together to help train community health workers to serve the under-served (www.chgnukc.org). He has faculty positions with Melbourne University (www.ni.unimelb.edu.au/regional_activity/southasia/uttarakhand), the Public Health Foundation of India (www.phfi.org), the Emmanuel Health Association (India) (www.eha-health.org), and is the international coordinator for the Community Health Global Network (www.chgn.org).

Lawrence Singh

Mr. Lawrence Singh is the Project Coordinator for Agnes Kunze Society - HOPE project in India, working in partnership and networking with various national and international organisations to improve basic access to health and social services in the community.

Hira Pant

Mr. Hira Pant is a Senior Statistician at Indian Institute of Public Health, Public Health Foundation of India based in Hyderabad, India

Jubin Varghese

Jubin Varghese is the Disability Project Manager for  Emmanuel Hospital Association. EHA presently has six Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) projects and is working towards making all health services accessible for persons with disabilities. 

GVS Murthy

Dr. Murthy is a public health specialist and a community physician. He is currently engaged in research and training at IIPH, Hyderabad. He is the Principal Investigator for a number of projects in India, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Pakistan. These include the differential mortality among cataract blind in Andhra Pradesh and the use of key informants to identify children with disabilities in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Dr. Murthy is establishing the South Asia Centre for Vision and Disability as a Centre of Excellence at IIPH, Hyderabad as a collaborative project of PHFI with LSHTM.

Monsurul Hoq

Monsurul Hoq works as a Statistician at MCRI, University of Melbourne.  He is also a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne.

Manjula Marella

Dr. Marella is a Research Fellow in the Inclusive Development Practice Unit of the Nossal Institute for Global Health. She works primarily within the CBM-Nossal Partnership for Disability Inclusive Development. Her research interests are measurement of disability and its impact, evaluation of disability inclusive development programs and development and validation of questionnaires using qualitative and quantitative (Rasch analysis) techniques. Manjula is an optometrist specialised in low vision rehabilitation. She completed her PhD from the Department of Ophthalmology, the University of Melbourne, in 2011. Her doctoral thesis involved developing an evaluation framework for community-based rehabilitation programs. Her postdoctoral research primarily focused on developing and validating a rapid assessment of disability toolkit to measure disability and its impact in terms of participation and inclusion in the community.

How to Cite

Nathan Grills, Lawrence Singh, Hira Pant, Jubin Varghese, GVS Murthy, Monsurul Hoq, Manjula Marella (2017-08-22). Access to Services and Barriers faced by People with Disabilities: A Quantitative Survey. Disability, CBR & Inclusive Development, Vol. 28 No. 2 (2017): Summer 2017, 23-44. https://doi.org/10.5463/dcid.v28i2.615

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