The proportion of disabled people is rising and now stands at 1 billion, or 15 percent of the global population, according to the first official global report on disability.
An ageing population and an increase in chronic health conditions, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, mean the proportion has grown from an estimated 10 percent in the 1970s.
However, despite a robust disability rights movement and a shift toward inclusion, disabled people remain second-class citizens, according to the report by the WHO and the World Bank. One in five experience “significant difficulties.”
In developed countries, disabled people are three times more likely to be denied healthcare than other people. Children with disabilities are less likely to start or stay in school than other children, while employment rates are at 44 percent, compared with 75 percent for people without disabilities in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the report found.
Barriers include stigma, discrimination, lack of adequate healthcare and rehabilitation services, and inaccessible transport, buildings and information. In developing countries the picture is even worse.
Tom Shakespeare, one of the authors of the World Report on Disability, said: “The clear message from the report is that there is no country that has got it right. Italy is a world leader in terms of inclusive education and deinstitutionalization of people with mental health problems, but in other areas it is not. In the US the access is phenomenal — it is a civil rights issue. However, if you are looking at poverty and employment it is not good.”
“Disabled people do not need to be poor and excluded; they do not need to be segregated. They do not need to be second-class citizens,” Shakespeare said.
One of the most “shocking and powerful” issues to come out of the report, according to Shakespeare, was the discrimination in healthcare.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) said disability was part of the human condition.
“Almost every one of us will be permanently or temporarily disabled at some point in life. We must do more to break the barriers which segregate people with disabilities, in many cases forcing them to the margins of society,” she said.
Eric Emerson of the Centre for Disability Research at Lancaster University in England said the findings on healthcare were not surprising.
“In the UK, there have been numerous independent reports documenting the systemic discrimination faced by people with disabilities, particularly people with learning disabilities. The health and wellbeing of disabled people is not simply as a direct result of their impairment. It’s a result of the way that people with impairments are treated by society,” he said.
Last year, the Life Opportunities Survey found many disabled people in Britain were isolated, cash-strapped and struggling to participate in normal activities, with a fifth saying they suffered from so much anxiety and lack of confidence that they lacked the ability to work.
The WHO report, which did not compare countries directly, but highlighted best practice, singled out the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act 2005, which places a duty on public bodies to promote equality and its direct payment policies for disabled people, as an example of good practice.
However, Shakespeare said: “The UK has done very well, due to its direct payment mechanisms and benefits like independent living allowance and access to work. It appears that many of these developments are under threat. The axing of the independent living fund and other changes to benefit appear to move away from what was a good situation.”
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