Disability facts
How many people live with disabilities globally?
Disability is defined by WHO as physical, sensory, intellectual or mental impairment.
Disabled people make up on average 10% of the global population (6 billion people). Difficult to assess numbers accurately because of the different ways disability is defined, poor data collection and poor detection systems.
Most disabled people live in the South.
Approximately 82% of disabled people live below the poverty line in developing countries. Disabled people make up 20% of the world’s poorest people. (EU guidance note on disability, 2002)
Disabled people lack access to health, education, clean water and sanitation, and live in poor housing in unsafe areas.
Disabled people’s lives are often harder because of their impairments – for instance in Rwanda, on average people have to walk 750 metres to get water – for someone with a mobility problem this is v. difficult (KAR, 2005). This issue can particularly affect children.
Disability affects not only individuals but their families as well – particularly because of the economic consequences.
Children with disabilities
Estimated to be 150 - 200 million children with disabilities in the world (out of a global population of 2 billion children). This means that about 10% of the total population of children is born with a disability or becomes disabled before the age of 19.
The vast majority of children with disabilities will live without access to health care, rehabilitation services, and education
98% of disabled children receive no formal education – and within this - boys with disabilities are more likely to attend schools compared with girls
In many places poverty is the direct cause of disability through lack of prenatal care, malnutrition or lack of vaccines – all of which can be addressed - as many as 50% of all disabilities are preventable.
For instance, WHO estimate that as many as 1.5 million children are blind, of which 70% of cases are preventable. Each year 250,000 – 350,000 children are blinded by vitamin A deficiency (which can be countered through the provision of an oral supplement).
Mortality for children with disabilities may be as high as 80% in countries where under five mortality as a whole has decreased below 20%. In some cases it seems as if children are being ‘weeded out’ (DFID, 2000)
Children involved in hazardous labour or affected by conflict are also at greater risk of becoming disabled.
Issues for children:
Right to life, survival and development – ensuring children with disabilities are provided with support to live and develop to their full potential. For instance, children with disabilities are subject to infanticide and mercy killings – such actions are not always condemned.
Violence against children with disabilities is a key issue – one group of researchers has reported that 90% of individuals with intellectual impairments will experience sexual abuse, often in childhood. Disabled children are more likely to experience violence from birth.
Stigma and prejudice are also key issues as in many communities a child with a disability is viewed as being born as the result of a curse, or misbehaviour of earlier generations. This can lead to neglect (being shackled, held in small rooms with little interaction) and lack of participation in the community
Neglect can be gender specific – with a study from Nepal demonstrating that the survival rate for boy children with polio was twice that for girls (polio affects equal numbers of boys and girls).
Disabled children are often targeted by sexual predators and can be subject to abuse and mistreatment in school.
Human Rights Watch found that death rates among institutionalised disabled children in Eastern Europe were almost twice that for children in the general population compared with disabled children who live at home. In some Chinese orphanages, where a significant proportion of all children are disabled, the mortality rates for some children exceeds 75%
Children with disabilities are subject to a range of risks including that of being abused and more vulnerable to HIV.