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Even in the digital age, access to literature and other information for people with print impairments remains extremely poor, especially in the developing world. Reading access holds cascading implications for education, economic empowerment, social participation and self-worth. In June 2013 member states of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization)concluded a landmark treaty to reduce copyright impediments to the dissemination of literature to print impaired people. Its effectiveness is not yet clear. Meanwhile, critics hold that disability studies’ analyses have too often lacked insight into the personal and psychological ramifications of exclusion. This article provides an account of the ‘book famine’ from the perspective of a print impaired South African disability researcher, arguing that thorough investigation of the impressions of exclusion is necessary for change. The account highlights the personal, even malignant psychological reverberations of deprivations such as the ‘bookfamine’, which may carry traumatic effects which cement the status quo.

This final short report summary encompasses the main findings of the Daphne III project “Access to Specialised Victim Support Services for Women with Disabilities who have experienced Violence.” The project aimed to assess the range of different experiences of violence against disabled women and their use of support structures. In addition specialised victim support services were interviewed about their experiences and capabilities in terms of counselling and accommodating disabled women. The project focused on three components: (1) Assessing the legal and policy framework (2) Generating extensive empirical data by surveying disabled or Deaf women (focus group discussions, in-depth-interviews) and service providers (online survey, interviews with staff members) and (3) Developing good practice examples and recommendations. For each component national reports and an associated comparative report was prepared, identifying the most prominent issues including the commonalities and differences between the four countries issues.

Background: Mortality rates from injuries are higher for people from poorer economic backgrounds than those with higher incomes (according to the World Health Organization [WHO]), and health care professionals and organisations dealing with people with disabilities experience that individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) in low income countries face serious challenges in their daily lives.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to explore life expectancy (life expectancy is the average remaining years of life of an individual) and the situation of persons living with SCI in low income settings.

Method: Literature studies and qualitative methods were used. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 23 informants from four study sites in Zimbabwe representing persons with SCI, their relatives and rehabilitation professionals.

Results: There are few publications available about life expectancy and the daily life of persons with SCI in low income countries. Those few publications identified and the study findings confirm that individuals with SCI are experiencing a high occurrence of pressure sores and urinary tract infections leading to unnecessary suffering, often causing premature death. Pain and depression are frequently reported and stigma and negative attitudes are experienced in society. Lack of appropriate wheelchairs and services, limited knowledge about SCI amongst health care staff, limited access to health care and rehabilitation services, loss of employment and lack of financial resources worsen the daily challenges.

Conclusion: The study indicates that life expectancy for individuals with SCI in low income settings is shorter than for the average population and also with respect to individuals with SCI in high income countries. Poverty worsened the situation for individuals with SCI, creating barriers that increase the risk of contracting harmful pressure sores and infections leading to premature death. Further explorations on mortality and how individuals with SCI and their families in low income settings are coping in their daily life are required to provide comprehensive evidences.

This article provides some insights into the challenges regarding inclusion in higher education of students with disabilities. It does this by elucidating aspects of the proceedings of the Education Commission at the African Network on Evidence-to-Action on Disability (AfriNEAD) Symposium, which took place in Zimbabwe in November 2011. The presentations specifically focused on the education of people with disabilities from early childhood through to higher education. This article, however, is informed by presentations focusing on increasing access to higher education. The article is focused on the implementation of evidence in practice, research and policies stemming from rigorous debate and scientific foundations, whilst taking into account the dynamic realities of the higher education context. Themes such as the systemic approach needed for inclusion to be successful, increasing access and the dynamic role of students with disabilities are highlighted.

“This literature review concerns the achievements of a project which started in 2014 and will last three years. The aim of this project is the dissemination and promotion of applied research results and disability to researchers and field stakeholders of the African continent (particularly to Disabled People Organizations), in order to increase knowledge on the situation of people with disabilities and the recommendations made to improve their social participation… The mapping of applied research in West African countries shows the exclusion related to the environment, which lacks the school, health, and sports infrastructure required to promote their [people with disabilities] rights. We will mainly deal with the issue of exclusion and its multidimensional aspect in West Africa, as well as the institutional efforts to set up development plans for people with disabilities in these regions”

Although athletes with disabilities have integrated into mainstream sport at a rapid rate across the world, Sub-Saharan Africa remains on the periphery of disability sport participation. Disability sport, like most modern regulated sports, has diffused from the Global North to the Global South, and continues to reproduce that process of diffusion though increasingly expensive sport prostheses, adapted equipment, and coaching techniques. The colonial underdevelopment of disability services and coexisting racial inequalities has led to the uneven diffusion of disability sport across the continent, which is reflected by South Africa’s domination of African participation in the Paralympic Games. The result is a ‘disability divide’ in international sport, where the increasing access to technology and sport assistance from the Global North largely benefits a few privileged elite disability athletes, most famously South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius. Presented from a historical perspective, the article traces the origins of the ‘disability divide,’ concluding that integration between disabled and non-disabled athletes around the world may reinforce the continent of Africa’s subordinate status in global capitalism through dependence on international sport aid and athletic migration.

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2014, Vol. 1 No. 1

A central claim in publicity for the Movement for Global Mental Health is that the movement is both ‘rights-based’ and ‘evidence-based’. In this article we focus on the second claim, critically examining the evidence on which the movement’s programme is based. The concepts and methodology of the movement are those of mainstream Western psychiatry, so we first review briefly the inadequacies and inconsistencies of this framework, in particular the problems of identifying, measuring, explaining and treating ‘mental illnesses’. We conclude that the scientific knowledge base of contemporary psychiatry has been gravely distorted by its dependence on financing from the pharmaceutical industry, which has led to exaggerated attention on biomedical theories and treatments with a corresponding neglect of social factors and prevention. Second, we examine the problems of transferring this framework to low and middle-income countries. Adopting a biomedical view enables the movement to evade awkward questions regarding the cultural embeddedness of the issues it deals with and their relation to social, economic and political conditions in these countries. Confident claims are made by the movement about the nature and prevalence of ‘mental illnesses’ across the world, the burden they represent, and the benefits to be expected from tackling them by ‘scaling-up’ mental health services based on Western knowledge. However, cross-cultural psychiatric epidemiology is not sufficiently developed to be able to support any of these claims and the considerable quantities of data that are produced as ‘evidence’ turn out to be largely based on guesswork. The article concludes that Western psychiatry can certainly provide low- and middle income countries with instructive examples – but they are mainly examples of what not to do.

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2

This paper critically examines some of the assumptions and politics which underlie the global mental health (GMH) movement; and explores the issue of cultural awareness within western psychiatric thinking and practice. The way distress is labelled has a range of consequences for the individual, their family and society, as well as those who may control or negotiate the descriptors used, the actions taken as a result of these and the resources subsequently allocated. This paper will examine if these are the most useful principles, and if so, who might be the main beneficiaries of these. The importance of context, international, national and health politics, in addition to wealth and power differentials cannot be ignored in the way that the global mental health debate is constructed. Diagnostic classification systems, such as the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), are not neutral documents as is frequently assumed but carry a range of assumptions and represent a number of interest groups. Different cultural constructions, explanatory health beliefs, idioms and local ways of dealing with distress often appear to be seen as additional layers of meaning within the current debate, rather than as the central organising concepts they are for many people. Yet the transfer of western psychiatric ideas and the uncritical generalisation of them around the world (even if made with the best of intentions) can undermine the rich traditions and cultural heritage of many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and could be viewed as a form of neo-colonialism. There are many angles to this debate, including the use of language and the fact that some cultures have concepts and long traditions around ‘mental health’ which are different from those used in ‘the west’. The paper will use the diagnostic category Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as an example to illustrate many of the points made.

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2

We have had two ‘cultures of critique'. One is where critique of a culture's own principles is generated internally. The other is when critique is mounted from the outside. This paper is an attempt to shore up the two-fold nature of both culture of critique and critique of culture through a close examination of an extant and entrenched cultural practice provisionally called ‘faith healing' in its interlocution with western mental health models that are incumbent upon the Indian setting. This paper will explore what critical theory may need to consider in the context of India. Would it need a cultural turn, a culturalising? What is meant by culturalising? Would ‘culturalising', in turn, be premised on a bidirectional or dual critique, that is, a critique of both the West's hegemonic principles as well as principles that hegemonize the East, emanating from either the West or from the East? What relation would critique set up with an existing culture and cultural practice? What relation would culture set up with an existing culture of critique? In the process, this paper is also an attempt to inaugurate and locate the beginning coordinates of a critique of critique through the turn to culture in conditions called ‘faith healing'. The paper is also about the tense and troubled dialogue between the current globalization of certain frameworks in mental health, and local (faith-based) practices of health and healing that have survived in India; survived even in mutation and transformation, through colonialism, civilizing mission, welfarism and developmentalism. How would the knowledge and practice of mental health take shape in India – a landscape crisscrossed by on the one hand, aggressively modern institutions of mental health science and on the other, extant and surviving institutions of faith-based healing practices? While we remain critically mired in faith-based practices, while we cannot but be critical of some faith-based practices, we also cannot announce the silent demise of all Other imaginations of health and healing and let One global discourse take hold of all cultures. Hence, perhaps the need for what we have called the difficult ‘dual critique’. For critique also means an account of and an attention to experience and practice; an account formulated on its own terms and not on terms put in place by globalizing discourses. 

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2