Sightsavers has produced a new film that sets out our work to make health care services accessible and inclusive for everyone. It focuses on our programmes in Bhopal, India and Nampula, Mozambique. This highlights how we work and share learnings globally, but also shows how programmes can be made locally relevant by working with partners with direct experience.
The film showcases some of the people who work hard to make our inclusive health programmes a success, from Sightsavers experts and government health workers to leaders of disabled people’s organisations.
To find out more our inclusive health work and how we are developing best practice in terms of inclusive health programmes, visit our website: https://www.sightsavers.org/disability/health/
This report documents how thousands of children in Armenia live in orphanages, residential special schools for children with disabilities, and other institutions. The report is based on Human Rights Watch visits to five state-run orphanages and ten state-run schools, including six special schools and four mainstream schools, and interviews with 173 people, in eight cities in Armenia. They interviewed 47 children and young adults, and 63 families of children living in orphanages, attending special schools or attending mainstream schools. They also interviewed directors of orphanages, special schools, and mainstream schools, as well as social workers, doctors, teachers, psychologists, caregivers, and other staff in institutions
Topics include: overview of residential institutions in Armenia; institutionalization of children and young adults and discrimination in the deinstitutionalization process; problems for children and young adults in residential institutions; lives transformed; national and international legal obligations; failure to guarantee quality education to children with disabilities; other forms of education for children with disabilities; government and donors’ response; recommendations
Dr Anthony Costello, Director of WHO's Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, answers some key questions on Microcephaly and Zika virus infection including concerning how a pregnant women would know if her baby is infected, what support would be needed if the child has Microcephaly and what steps can be taken to avoid being infected
This short video highlights the situation of disabled children in Russian orphanages. In conjunction with the report by Human Rights Watch, it calls for the better treatment of disabled children in institutions and increased de-institutionalisation
This video highlights that many children and people with disabilities and older persons continue to be placed in long-stay residential institutional care in countries across Europe, often for life. The video features the experiences of Mikhail in Moldova and Assen in Bulgaria who both grew up in institutional care
The documentary highlights the importance of the right to community integration. It follows a young man, Jorge, who went from living in a caged cell to a life in the community and highlights Mental Disability Rights International's (MDRI) work in Paraguay, where international human rights law was used to end life-threatening abuses in psychiatric facilities and lay the groundwork for a new system of community care. This film would be beneficial for people interested in human rights and advocacy for people with learning disabilities