In Bangladesh poverty is a common phenomenon. Disability and poverty are interrelated. According to WHO, disable people are estimated at 10% of any population. Among them, a good number of people are living in poverty. This is due to different reasons. The realization is that disabled people become poor because of their low income and poor lifestyle. So, particularly in the poorest countries of the world, where there is no benefit system, being amongst the very poorest has more severe implications of life or death than in rich countries. The basic cause of this poverty is exclusion: from social, economic and political life.
Low family income restrains the family to send their children to primary school. Some of the children are involved in assisting family in daily labour. Neither the parents nor the children express their willingness to get enrolled in education. The percentage of this group of children, however, is decreasing due to government initiatives to include 100% children in the primary schools.
Disability of the children decreases the interests and confidence of the family to get their children enrolled in primary schools. Distance of the schools is one of the key barriers to every child especially for the girl child and children with disabilities. Some children especially children with disabilities may require some assistance from his or her family and community in his or her mobility. Low cooperation from the family or community restricts the children with disabilities from the enrolment in education.
People with disabilities have less access to food and safe water. Poor families often do not have land to grow food, and inadequate income to purchase their basic needs, shelter, sustenance and sanitation are inadequate, and access to health is very limited.
Family members often become ill, and some of the diseases are potentially disabling. Mothers have low-birth weight babies, who are more at risk of debilitating diseases than healthy babies. Malnutrition causes different types of disabilities. Lack of adequate and timely health care can exacerbate disease outcomes, and can turn to impairment into chronic disabilities. Without resources for medical or social services, a remedial impairment can become a permanent disability.
Extreme poverty causes disability through many factors including unsafe working conditions. Poor people tend to work often in more risky physical labour environment. That's why they fall from height, get serious injury and become disable and they are fired from their workplaces. That's why they become economically poor.
Disability contributes to and deepens poverty on an individual, family and community level due to discrimination and institutional and attitudinal barriers. So a person with a disability and their family are less likely to have access to rehabilitation, education, skills training and employment opportunities - opportunities which could otherwise reduce poverty.
This is why it is so important to include people with disabilities across all sectors of international development. Empowering people with disabilities to receive a worthwhile education, access to health and rehabilitation services, gain a livelihood and participate fully in society is essential to end the cycle of disability and poverty.
Not only is inclusion of people with disabilities essential to end the cycle of poverty and disability, it is also important to help make international aid more effective. When spending on aid and development includes people with disabilities, it can then reach the poorest and most marginalized people.
The writer is Clinical Occupational Therapist, Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed (CRP), Mirpur-14, Dhaka. Email: rabeya1988@gmail.com
