Seynabou Ndiaye

Women with disabilities face a very high rate of illness” – Seynabou Ndiaye

Dear Friend,

People with disabilities are three times less likely to be able to access the health care they need compared to people without disabilities.

Some of the reasons for this include:

Inaccessible health care centres
The cost of transport and health services
Negative attitudes of health care staff
A lack of disability-sensitive health policies where women’s specific needs are not always taken into account

Will you sign our petition to ensure that people with disabilities are not left behind when it comes to accessing health care?

Seynabou Ndiaye is a passionate advocate for the right to quality health care, particularly for women with disabilities. She is a physiotherapist working in Dakar, Senegal, and she also leads an organisation of people with disabilities.

We interviewed Seynabou and she spoke about how in her experience, health promotion and prevention activities rarely involve people with disabilities. This results in their needs not being reflected or acknowledged.

Seynabou explains how access to any kind of health care is a particularly big issue for women with disabilities. There are significant barriers in accessing health services and, as a result, they face a very high rate of illness.

One of the SDGs is to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all, at all ages. And that includes people with disabilities. Our #PromiseInPeril petition is calling on governments to take action on the SDGs, and to honour their central promise to ‘leave no one behind’.

People with disabilities must be included and consulted on the issues that affect their lives, such as health care policies. Will you join thousands of other campaigners and sign our petition today?

We’re demanding that world leaders consult with and listen to people with disabilities, like Seynabou, in order to understand their priorities, experiences and challenges, and translate this into meaningful change. As Seynabou says, “Nothing about us without us”.

Thanks,

Olivia