Why a book about health for women with disabilities? 3
This book can help most women with disabilities better care for themselves,
improve their general health, their capabilities and self-reliance, and their ability to
participate more effectively in their communities.
This book is not a rehabilitation manual and does not have all the information
needed to diagnose and treat different kinds of disease, sickness or disability. The
book has other goals.
This book gives information about the ways a disability may make the health
needs of a woman with a disability different from those of a woman who does not
have a disability.
The information in the book will help women with disabilities get better care
from others.
This book will help health workers, as well as family members and caregivers,
learn that disability by itself does not mean sickness, but that a woman with a
disability—a blind woman, or a woman who uses a wheelchair—may have illnesses
such as HIV/AIDS or malaria, just like women who do not have disabilities.
This book will help families, friends, community health workers, and other
people who assist women with disabilities to be partners in caring.
This book also has information about the social causes of disability, and suggests
ways to help change feelings and beliefs that are harmful to the health of women
with disabilities, their families, and their communities.
To make the book as useful as possible, women with disabilities around the
world shared their health needs, beliefs, and practices, and told us what they would
most like included in the book. Their voices, experiences, and stories helped shape
the writing and are reflected on every page.
Tell me how
long you
have been
paralyzed.
Why does he ask me about
my paralyzed leg? I told
him everyone in my family
also has a bad fever right
now, and that none of
them is paralyzed. I’m
sure we all have the same
sickness.
A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities 2007