June 2010

Ron Nabors, CEO of CBM-US, recently was invited to speak at the Global Health and Innovation Summit, a conference with more than 2,000 attendees from 55 countries, held at Yale University. He presented on the subject “Sustainable Development of Persons with Disabilities Living in the Poorest Countries of the World.”

It was an honor to be a guest speaker at the Global Health and Innovation Summit this past spring. CBM’s inclusion on the agenda of this conference with such a wide-reaching audience was a significant step in our efforts to build an inclusive society by addressing the relationship between poverty and disability.

The World Bank (2002) estimates that one in six people living on less than a $1 a day has a disability. A disabled person is more likely to be poor due to lack of access to health care, education, livelihood and other opportunities. In turn, people living in abject poverty are more likely to develop disabilities as the result of lack of access to adequate sanitation, nutrition, health care and other vital resources.  It’s a Catch 22, and you can’t separate the two. Poverty can never be fully addressed until we address disability.

Providing disabled people with access to services is a major key to breaking this seemingly never-ending cycle of poverty and disability. Addressing poverty as a cause and consequence of disability is fundamental to CBM’s mission. Together with its global network of partners, CBM works to make comprehensive healthcare, education, and rehabilitation services available and accessible to people with disabilities in the poorest areas of the world.

I’m reminded of a clinic I visited in Zimbabwe several years ago. Each day, patients would line up to receive treatment. Yet at the end of each day, there sat a group of people, waiting, but never able to see a doctor. This particular clinic sat atop wooden stilts, and patients had to climb a steep set of stairs. For people with physical disabilities, this was an impossible task. Being unable to climb the stairs meant that they had no access to critical healthcare services. They were simply left out—forgotten.

Because disability is a topic that is often “forgotten” or hidden away, CBM recognizes it as a basic human rights issue. CBM advocates for the inclusion of disabled people into their societies. That’s why CBM is committed to empowering persons with disabilities to have a voice in all areas of society, especially in government. In addition to helping persons with disabilities become involved in their local governments, the legal framework provided by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008), allows CBM and other international partners to ensure that disability remains on the international development agenda as well.

As we strive to build an inclusive society, we must continue our multi-pronged approach to providing access for people with disabilities. By doing so, we can begin to break the debilitating cycle of poverty and disability.