The Deaf Women Aloud Initiative (DWAI) has expressed concerns over the poor inclusion of the deaf community, particularly its women in policies and programmes intended to address sexual reproductive health (SRH) challenges.
Its Executive Director, Helen Beyioku-Alase, stated this Thursday in Abuja during a project consultative meeting organised to discuss the development of health specific sign-language glossary.
The glossary is aimed at bridging the communication gap between healthcare providers and people with hearing impairment to make healthcare facility easier for them.
The Nigeria Disability Act (2019) and UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities ratified by Nigeria recognises the rights of PWD’s, especially deaf women and girls to access professional sign language interpretation in order to facilitate their accessibility (Art 9), the reproductive rights (Art 23) the rights to access SRH information and services (Art. 25) and the specific need for empowerment of women with disability (Art. 6).
Beyioku-Alase lamented the negative perceptions about deafness and lack of societal understanding of their concerns, saying this had contributed to the neglect of the deaf in SRH policies and service delivery.
“For example, available data suggests that deaf people are more likely to face difficulties utilizing common sources of information than their hearing counterparts.
“They encounter communication barriers in the healthcare system because healthcare providers typically cannot communicate with them. In addition, healthcare providers often underestimate the difficulties of speech reading and overestimate deaf people’s ability to understand written notes,” she said.
The ED further decried the absence and high cost of hiring sign language interpreters’ services, saying this is a huge barrier to accessing quality healthcare for deaf people.
“Generally, the absence and cost of hiring sign language interpreters’ services by the deaf women and girls to access their sexual and reproductive health rights within the health facilities in Nigeria particularly in Abuja has often limited our chance to quality sexual and reproductive health services thereby increasing the rate of maternal mortality and morbidity among deaf women and their families especially children.
” As a result of this, many deaf women do not go to health facilities for care while the few that do so are often neglected and/or ignored at health facilities by the health workers due to communication gap and other discriminatory attitudes.
“Anecdotal evidence suggest that deaf women have reduced access to health information and experience barriers in accessing screening, prevention and care services resulting in greater unmet health needs especially in relation to sexual and reproductive health services and information,” she stressed.
A consultant on the sign-language glossary, Dr. Ijeoma Nnodim, condemned the prevalence of gender based violence (GBV), stressing the need for the deaf women to be empowered in order to prevent them from being victims.
