A 4-day workshop on the Adaptation of the National Policy on Sexual and Reproductive Health and rights of persons with disabilities with an emphasis on women and girls for kaduna state began on Wednesday in Zaria.
Participants at the four day event organised by the Kaduna State Government with support from Sight Savers and Lafiya Project, are looking at the National Policy and see how the State could domesticate it based on its peculiarity.
In her opening remarks, the Executive Secretary, Kaduna State Disability Affairs Board, Hajia Rakiya Umar told the participants drawn from MDAs, association of PLWDs and CSOs as well as the Family Health Advocates in Nigeria Initiative, FHANI, that the inclusion has come to stay in Kaduna State and wished them a fruitful deliberation.
A Consultant, Mallam Lawal Abubakar said there are about 25Million PLWD in Nigeria and more than half are women.
Mallam Abubakar who gave an overview of the National Policy, said the participants would be grouped into the thematic areas of Awareness, Access, Inclusion, partnership and M&E.
On the challenges faced by PLWDs in accessing RH services, a Participant, Risikatu Mohammed said people didn’t know that PLWD have desires and are sexually active so if they go to hospital service providers called them based on their disability and looked at them that they are not supposed to be sexually active. “There were also issues of structures of the health facilities. “There are issues of colour and lighting brought about by the representative of the albino Deborah.
On the service providers, she said, government needs to do more on behavioral change on service providers and enforcement of relevant laws and policies of the State to achieve the desired goals
