Disability in Pakistan
According to the world report on disability approximately one billion people in the world are living with a disability, with at least one quarter being children and 80% living in developing countries.
Here, we are discussing not disability as a whole but the physical handicapped and crippled by Cerebral Palsy, Polio, Loosing of limbs in accidents etc. The vast majority of children with disabilities in developing countries have no access to rehabilitative health care or support services, and many are unable to acquire a formal education. Children with disabilities are often marginalized from society and remain invisible to the mainstream population and education officials. In most developing countries there is little relevant data to identify the number of disabled children. There are also no effective policies to address their needs and provide them access to a quality education.
Even when such policies are in place, appropriate financing is lacking to build accessible buildings, train teachers in inclusive education, and scale up successful local pilot programs to the national level.
Why to compromise disability, we are capable of curing it
a. We at present have 200 disabled children who belong to SEC-C
b. The families of these children have an average monthly income below 20,000.
c. Living in both urban & rural areas of Faisalabad District (Faisalabad City, Shahkot, Jaranwala, Toba Tek Sigh, Jhang, etc.
d. Some parents of disabled children are belongs from Khyber Pakhtoon Khawa (KPK), Baluchistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir. They are asking for treatment of their children and explaining that due to poverty, they cannot afford to pay the treatment charges.
e. Farrukh Foundation is always ready for support for needy patients especially for children but it has limited resources and not able to manage the treatment expenses of all of the flow of the patients from its own.
f. From time to time, many patients get registered for free treatment. We provide them free or subsidize treatment within our limited resources and sometimes, we do by some donors but the list is big and need more and more resources. This list of 200 children patients really deserved for treatment but we have no resource and requesting for source to start their treatment.
Ghalia Farrukh, Executive Director Furrukh Foundation
C: +92-301-8664222
MY APPEAL FROM FURRUKH FOUNDATION
It is essential that societies adapt their structures to ensure that all children, irrespective of age, gender and disability, can enjoy their basic human rights without discrimination of any kind. This applies to education systems which need changes and new, innovative approaches to fit the specific needs of children with disabilities.
Children with disabilities are more likely to drop out of school than any other vulnerable groups even in countries with high primary school enrollment rates. Poverty, malnutrition, poor health, illiteracy, and lack of access to proper sanitary conditions or clean water aggravate the consequences of existing disabilities. Disabilities may include learning, speech, physical, cognitive, sensory disabilities or emotional difficulties. Too little data is collected about children with disabilities, making appropriate interventions impossible.
1According to WHO 15% of the world population is disable. In Pakistan, there are no updated statistics on the number of persons with disabilities, and in specific, there are no updated statistics on women and girls with disabilities, and what types of disabilities they are affected of. Disability has been recognized and included in the census; however “statistics on disability suffer from inadequacies such as lack of standardized definitions. 2As per the Senses of 1998, total 3,286,630 Pakistani population is disables. From them 18.96% are crippled. If we agreed with these figures for than 623,145 persons are physically disabled in 1998. Now, after 14 years, this figure grows more than a million. But if we agreed with WHO figures of 15% disability of the whole population and we supposed the population of Pakistan is 160 Million and its 18.93% crippled population figure. The results are more than 4.5 million crippled people are living surrounding of us and majority is children. This is the real horrible condition of our society.