THE PROJECT ON "EFFECTIVE HIV/AIDS AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH INFORMATION FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES: A RIGHT’S BASED APPROACH"

THE PROJECT GOAL

The project contains three components: A research component; To identify an effective and accessible method of delivering HIV/AIDS information to people with disabilities, A capacity building component; To ensure disabled women’s organisations are well equipped to carry out sustainable HIV/AIDS awareness programmes and an Awareness component to ensure people with disabilities have access to information about HIV/AIDS and that the mainstream community is aware of disability issues.

SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

FEDOMA finalised its five-year strategic plan. The process followed an extensive stakeholder consultative approach to ensure that the contents were representative of the actual needs of the people on the ground.

As part of this process a needs assessment exercise for all the affiliated organisations was carried out. During these assessments the issue that was commonly raised by the DPOs was lack of access to information about HIV/AIDS by people with disabilities.

HIV/AIDS continues to be a life-threatening phenomenon with more and more people contracting the virus. It is estimated that 250 Malawians contract the virus that causes AIDS everyday and the rate of spread is escalating.

The pandemic continues to create many problems both at national and domestic level including:

1. High mortality rates depriving the nation of its productive human resource
2. Creation of orphans. It is estimated that 70 000 children in Malawi are orphaned each year.
3. High national and domestic expenditures on HIV/AIDS related illnesses.
4. Personal suffering due to HIV/AIDS related illnesses.

Looking at the severity of its effects upon the society it is inevitable that all sectors of the society join hands in the fight against the pandemic. However many HIV/AIDS Programmes by various service providers in sensitising the community on the dangers of HIV/AIDS have failed to include disability issues thereby excluding a significant proportion of society. This therefore leaves people with disabilities practically vulnerable and at risk to the pandemic.

This is due to a number of reasons

1. Failure to fully access the information on HIV/AIDS because of the current presentation formats i.e.

1. People with visual impairment cannot access printed information both in text and graphics. Televised messages are equally inaccessible.
2. Albinos can hardly access information in the normal print format.
3. People with hearing impairment cannot access spoken messages through awareness campaigns radio and all other oral formats.
4. People with physical disabilities fail to access information and education and counselling centres due to physical barriers and inaccessible structures.

1. Lack of special training to meet the needs of people with disabilities for many service providers resulting in non-effective or failure of communication of information to People with disabilities.  Most public programmes do not include people with disabilities. For example the Behaviour Change Intervention (BCI) Strategy has no strategies for people with disabilities though these were identified as a vulnerable group.
   
2. Poor societal attitudes and discrimination against people with disabilities resulting in people with disabilities being excluded from targeted information audiences.

While it remains a fact that   all people with disabilities experience similar problems and barriers when trying to access mainstream information, the problem is compounded for women with disabilities due to the general lack of gender balance in the Malawian Society.

PROGRAMME OBJECTIVES:

1. Research Component

1. To identify the problems people with disabilities experience in accessing information on HIV/AIDS .
2. To identify where the main gaps in HIV/AIDS related knowledge exist for people with disabilities.
3. To recommend an appropriate and effective information delivery system for people with disabilities.

2. Capacity Building Component

1. To ensure disabled women acquire skills in Advocacy, organisational management, programme planning, proposal writing, monitoring and evaluation and financial management.
2. Disabled women to design an advocacy programme to deliver recommendations of the research findings.
3. Practice the advocacy programme with other people with disabilities in the disability sector

3. Awareness Component

1. To lobby government and non-government stakeholders to include disability issues in their policies and programmes.
2. To encourage government and non-government organisations to implement research recommendations.
3. To inform civil society of disability and HIV related issues