Abstract
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has firmly placed disability in a human rights perspective. In the context of the Convention, disability refers to activity limitations and participation restrictions that result from the interaction of an impairment of body function or structure with environmental factors. The Convention addresses the rights of persons with disability in all aspects of life, including education and community integration and their right to equal access to services, such as schools, medical facilities and communication. Articles 25 and 26 explicitly state the right to health and access to health- related rehabilitation for persons with disabilities, 1 in all settings and situations, including during emergencies and natural disasters. Adherence to the Convention however, can be particularly challenging in a disaster response given the different economic and social vulnerabilities including poverty, as well as environmental hazards and damaged infrastructure. This can be further com- pounded by the limited time emergency medical teams are typically deployed for as part of a disaster response.
Highlights
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has firmly placed disability in a human rights perspective
Rehabilitation professionals have been underrepresented in emergency medical teams
Guidance documents have started to promote the importance of inclusion and/or close coordination of rehabilitation professionals with these teams.[5,6]
Summary
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has firmly placed disability in a human rights perspective. The Convention with its focus on a social model of disability, in which disability is seen as a function of the interactions between an impairment and the barriers in the environment, implies the need to provide a patient-centred, multidisciplinary model of care in hospital settings. In light of the surge in traumatic injury seen in disaster events, it is crucial that emergency medical teams assess their capacity and prepare themselves to coordinate with both local and international agencies Such coordination will allow for patient care to continue beyond the medical teams’ departure and better preparation of the injured for social and economic inclusion. Those documents that do encourage the inclusion of rehabilitation in disaster response are relatively novel and their success in improving standards of service delivery are yet to be practically tested.[7]
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