Factors influencing the prevalence of disabilities among children - under 15 years (a case study in the Akwapim South District)

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
2004-11-14
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
One challenging problem to the socio-economic development of Ghana is the increasing prevalence of disability in human populations. Several disabled persons who could not be gainfully employed resort to alms begging in the streets of the cities, sometimes becoming a public nuisance. The adverse effects of disability are numerous, such that more national efforts are needed to curtail the condition or minimize its incidence. A strategy in this regard is to identify the causes of disability or the factors which influence these causes, and combat them. This study was carried out to determine factors influencing the prevalence of disabilities among children in the Akwapim South District in the Eastern Region and to make recommendation(s) on how to address these factors. A descriptive cross-sectional study which used structured questionnaire to collect relevant data from one hundred and fifty (150) sampled population and thirty (30) identified mothers (respondents) with disabled children from three sub-districts was used. Questions were designed to obtain information on the association of disabilities to several identified factors. The data obtained suggest that the factors could be as variable as reported in literature. Two major factors however stand out clearly, and they are illness and injuries (accidents) during the pre-school period. The effect of poverty is also apparent but more indirect. There are also possible contributions by lack of education, which puts the women in low income group and deprive them of the knowledge on antenatal care, infections and other problems during pregnancy, the use of drugs including alcohol during pregnancy and attempted abortion. Mother’s age at the time of delivery of the disabled child did not seem to be a contributing factor here, since most of the women were below the age of 35 years. Many cases of disability could have been reversed if the mothers had had knowledge of how they develop or had adequate knowledge on the normal developmental stages of a child. Which means lack of knowledge on these processes is a possible factor. Based on the findings of the study the following recommendations are made to improve the situation: > Health education and promotion programmes in the District should be intensified to improve pre-natal care and child welfare. > Essentially parents should be educated on the developmental stages in children, emphasizing the problems that may occur. > Issues related to antenatal clinic visits and drug use during pregnancy should all be critically considered > Issues related to formal education and good employment opportunities should also be discussed
Description
Athesis submitted to the Department of Community Health, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health Sciences Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of MSc.degree in Health Education and Promotion, 2004
Keywords
Citation
Collections