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Mozambique

Disability and HIV & AIDS in Mozambique

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Introduction

This is a report on research into disability and HIV & AIDS in two provinces of Mozambique. The research, supported by the Big Lottery Fund, was undertaken between April 2007 and March 2008 by Disability and Development Partners (DDP) together with our Mozambican partner organisation, Associacao dos Deficientes Mocambicanos (the Mozambican Association of Disabled People - ADEMO) and a range of other stakeholders (see below in Chapter 5)

The stimulus for this study was the knowledge of the relatively high incidence of HIV among the general population of Mozambique and its relationship to disabled people in the country: specifically, we were interested to determine the extent to which disabled people are affected and whether mainstream mitigation and prevention work includes disabled people and their needs. Based on the low level of social inclusion of disabled people in the country and the low priority assigned to disability issues, our working hypothesis was that we would find that HIV & AIDS policies and programmes broadly took no account of disabled people and their needs, but we remained determinedly open minded about the scale of HIV & AIDS incidence among disabled people and other research objectives.

We soon found that the timing of our research was serendipitous. As we were beginning to plan the research, the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities launched its own campaign on disability and HIV & AIDS, sharing some of our objectives. This in turn helped to lead to increasing production and availability of resources, which made the desk study research component more straightforward.

We are now pleased to present our report and to disseminate it to as wide an audience as possible. It is our intention to contribute to the growing body of knowledge in this field and then to draw out the implications of our findings to inform future policy, programme design and methodology.

About Disability and Development Partners (DDP)

Until July 2005, DDP was called the Jaipur Limb Campaign (JLC). When we started out in 1992, this name brought together our inspiration - the Indian made, affordable Jaipur foot - with the campaigning fervour against landmines and for sustainable rehabilitation services for disabled people in the South where the un-met needs were great. JLC was co-founder of the UK Working Group on landmines, a campaigning coalition which brought together more than 50 UK agencies to join the international movement to ban landmines.

We worked with local partners to set up an orthopaedic centre for amputees in Gaza Province, Mozambique; a Research, Rehabilitation and Training Centre in Bangalore, India; and a Limb and Brace Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Other projects under the JLC banner were community based rehabilitation projects such as Makkala Bhavishya (Children's Future) in the slums of Bangalore which supported disabled and other excluded children to go to school, and research and development on appropriate and low cost technology such as pre fabricated knee, ankle and foot orthosis calliper components for children with polio.

Through this work we learned that the provision of rehabilitation services is inextricably linked to other basic human needs and rights such as education, livelihoods and health care - so often denied to disabled people. This prompted us to begin the quest for a new name - one that would better express what we do, disability and development, and how we do it, with partners.

DDP's vision is a society where disabled people have equal social, economic, civil and political rights; our mission is to develop partnership with organisations of and for disabled people, international agencies and governments to reduce poverty among disabled people and their families, by setting up programmes in the areas of socioeconomic empowerment, capacity building, advocacy and education, and promoting appropriate rehabilitation technology and South to South exchange of know-how.

DDP's current partnerships are in post conflict Angola and Mozambique, Ethiopia and India. Our partners are disabled people's organisations, national and grassroots rehabilitation organisations, national and international development agencies and others. DDP has recently re-launched our website (www.ddpweb.org) which contains full details of our work.

DDP in Mozambique

The Centro Ortopédico Jaipur (COJ) was DDP's first project in Africa. The long civil war which ended in 1992 and the use of landmines in Mozambique left many amputees and disabled people needing help. In 1995, two provinces still lacked a rehabilitation workshop and service, so, together with our local partner, Cruz Vermelha de Mozambique - CVM (Mozambique Red Cross Society) and in consultation with the Mozambican - 3 - ministry of health, we set up a rehabilitation service in a new centre in one of them - Gaza province.