Experiences of Organisations of (or That Serve) Persons with Disabilities during the COVID-19 Pandemic and National Lockdown Period in South Africa

Abstract

Organisations have long played an effective role in advocating for and actioning crucial developmental and humanitarian functions around the world, often under challenging conditions, as well as servicing the health needs of persons with disabilities. This article reports on the experiences of organisations of (or that serve) persons with disabilities, hereafter called service providers, during the COVID-19 lockdown period in South Africa beginning 26 March 2020. Organisations participated in an online survey as well as virtual narrative interviews to voice out their experiences. Five major themes emerged: (1) difficulties in keeping the doors open; (2) continued care under lockdown; (3) restructuring of care (4) government systems and policies; and (5) reaching out to offer and receive support. The findings demonstrate that the South African government failed to ensure targeted support to organisations of persons with disabilities. A remarkable feature of the organisations we interviewed for this small study was their agility in responding creatively to the challenges they faced, despite the difficulties. There is a need for government support to include targeted efforts to support organisation of persons with disabilities during pandemics to avoid worsening service gaps.

Understanding the impacts of the COVID-19 response measures on Deaf adults in Cape Town

“…The inaccessibility of health services for Deaf patients and the consequences of providers’ negative attitudes and discrimination towards PWDs are longstanding, global issues (Masuku, Moroe & Van Der Merwe 2021 ). Findings from this study and several others provide evidence that the existing discriminatory practices and communication barriers in the health system worsened during the pandemic (Hlongwane et al 2022 ; Ned et al 2020). The exclusion of interpreters as an essential service, imposition of mask mandates, and the consequential reliance on written communication not only compromised the quality-of-care participants received, but further infringed on their right to receive health information in their preferred language, as granted in the South African Health Act (61 of 2003) , as well as their constitutional right to access quality health care (Haricharan et al 2013 ).…”

“…Members come to DCCT for counselling services, booking interpreters, employment opportunities, skill-building and social engagements. The efforts of disabled persons’ organisations (DPOs) during the pandemic to support their communities and contribute to research, despite a lack of support from government have been documented globally (Hillgrove et al 2021 ; Hlongwane et al 2022 ).…”

Disability Inclusion and Pandemic Policymaking in South Africa: A Framework Analysis

“…In South Africa, home care services are scarce, and where available are usually provided by NGOs. During the pandemic, no targeted support reached organisations of and for people with disabilities, and regulations shifted existing resources (human and financial) to the COVID-19 effort (Hlongwane et al 2022). In DOH facilities, many rehabilitation workers were also redeployed to COVIDspecific activities (van Biljon & van Niekerk 2022).…”

“…The poor state of disability inclusion in South African policy is not a new finding, although this study provides evidence of its continuance under the COVID-19 pandemic. Decades of advocacy by the South African disability sector have called for mainstreaming and inclusive policymaking, with disappointing effect (Hlongwane et al 2022). These recommendations continue to be repeated in other work on disability from the COVID-19 era (McKinney 2021;Kuper et al 2020;Mulibana 2020).…”

Leveraging Responsible, Explainable, and Local Artificial Intelligence Solutions for Clinical Public Health in the Global South

“…As a consequence, the global community has failed to sufficiently and proactively identify, and respond to secondary impacts that intensify as "globally networked hyperrisks" [40] generated by "strongly connected, global networks" and complex, interacting, "highly interdependent systems", cascading across various sectors and scales-local, regional, national and international, individual, community/population, public, and global [39][40][41]. In addition, existing risk management and governance infrastructure for disease and disease outbreak policies often lack adequate mechanisms for considering the diverse needs of vulnerable or at-risk populations, including those living in informal settlements and geographically isolated settings [42], socio-economically deprived or underserved populations [43,44], those who are homeless [45], racialized visible minorities [46,47], women [48], the elderly [49], persons with disabilities [50], Indigenous communities [51], informal workers [52], migrants and refugees [53], those without citizenship rights [54,55], sex workers [56][57][58], and the two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, queer, intersex, asexual, polysexual/pansexual (2SLGBTQIAP+) community [59], among others.…”