The Northern Regional women’s wing of the Ghana Federation of Disability, is appealing to the various health facilities within the region most especially Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), to employ a sign language interpreter to support hearing impaired who seek medical attention at the facility.
According to the group, that the lack of sign language interpreters at the various health facilities was affecting their members most especially the hearing impaired any time they seek medical attention at the hospitals.
The group made the call at a press briefing on Friday 25th February, 2022 indicating that “sign language interpreters are lifeline for the hard -of -hearing patient, without the ability to communicate, these patients are in a frightful situation where their health is reliant on understanding what may only be bits of sentence hence, their call.
The Northern Regional women’s wing of the Blind Union President, Madam Abubakari Ayishatu, who addressed the media on behalf of her colleagues, while calling on health facilities to employ sign interpreters also highlights some challenges facing persons with disability in the region, most especially those at the public institutions.
Abubakari Ayishatu addressing the media however, appeal to government to employ some of their members at the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to help address their concern.
“With the stressful processes that comes with registration and renewing NHIA cards, is one of the challenges faced by we the Union of People With Disabilities (PWDs)”, she stated.
“We also suggest they take into consideration the economic aspect of our Union when deciding on the fees, people with disability should be given subsidized fees on renewal or registering new cards”, she added.
Madam Ayishatu also expressed worry over the excluding of PWDs on government employment opportunities including MASLOC, NABCO, and YEA.
“It is against this background that we demand a quoter allocation of opportunities from these institutions to ensure we have better livelihood”, she said.
She expressed concern over the luck of information flow on the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) for PWDs.
She thus called on the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly and Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly, to have half-a-year engagement with the PWDs on the state of the 3% DACF.
Story By: Alhassan Yakubu |www.diamondfmonline.com |Ghana
