Basic orientation about mentally handicapped people in bolivia

Cathegory: Article
Title: Basic Orientation about mentally handicapped people in Bolivia
Author: Feliza Ali Ramos Handicap Coordinator – for Internacional Service Bolivia (IS) http://www.is-bolivia.org

Original Document (In spanish)

http://www.is-bolivia.org/includes/documents/cm_docs/2009/o/orientacion_basica_sobre_discapacidad_contexto_boliviano.pdf

Is Bolivia (Internacional ServiceBolivia) is an institution which Works with support of the Ireland Government that works with projects for kids, young people and handicap people

1. General Diagnosis

The handicapped people in Bolivia lived and are living in a situation of exclusion, because in al the process of Social and Economic development they was not took in count, which is reflecte in the fact that the resoursesof the country are not distributed equally. The population doesn´t recognize the handicapped people as persons, this can be proved in the fact that the people see first the handicap before the person, because of that its comun to hear referring to they as “The handicapped” instead of “The person with a handicap”, this situation takes us to constantly to vulnerary the human rights and generatesdiscrimination in different areas as education, health, work, etc.

Since many year ago until now, the model of attention of the Doctors had contributed in the disvalue of the person with handicap, this because the person doesn’t take decition over his own life instead is the “specialist” or “The Expert” who decided the best for the people with handicap, besides the handicap is always related withthe ill this situation points the absences of true social protection.

Under this analysis we can affirm that the subjet of handicap in Bolivia:

• It has not passed the disvalue vision, reduction and medical Asistencialist
• The law is not know by authorities and social actors
• This subjet can´t be in to the public agenda, and make it one of the priorities of the nationalprogram

The Government is trying to change this with the National Plan for Equal Opportunities for Handicap People (PINEO in Spanish) but the execution depends on the local government in therms of cities and Province Government.

2. Statistical Data about the handicapped population

The last Census of Bolivia was in 2001, where was visited 1’977.665 houses and it registered the presence ofSensorial handicapped (Eyes and ears) person in 61.145 houses which represents the 3,09% of the houses. It was not take in count the mentally handicapped and the question was marked in the category of houses not by individual. This results received a lot of critics by the handicapped population because they was not really represented in that data.

The data which is managed is the one from theWorld Health Organization which says that in developing countries about the 10% of the population has some kind of handicap, with this we are talking about 800.000 distributed as follows:

• 30% people mentally handicapped
• 30% people physically handicapped
• 35% people sensorial handicapped
• 0,5% people with other disabilites

THE EVANGELIC UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CRUZ.-perfomed a population Quiz and in the Province of Santa Cruz it was found that the 17% of the population has some kind of handicap or disability, with that inference they estimate that there is about 8.888 handicap persons in Bolivia

THE UNIC REGISTER OF HANDICAP PEOPLE.- According to the information from the Government they manage the data of between 12.000 and 15.000 handicap people from themthey registered 7.500 in his data base and just 1200 has handicap ID

3. Education

Currently the education of handicap people in school age, generally is given by the special education, there are references of school integration to normal school, which results needs to be under analysis. This population doesn´t have acces to a lot of options about education and constantly claim by...