COVID19: Are Kenya's Disabled People Still an Afterthought?

It has been a while since the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic, and marshalled the global might of governments, UN agencies, bilateral institutions, businesses and citizenry towards its response.

COVID-19, of course, is the word on everyone’s lips, and we are all focusing with concern on its effects on humanity and the world economy. Various measures have had to be employed globally to curtail the spread of the virus, but a cure is yet to be found. (I will not bother you with any terminologies, because medical training isn’t my forte, and an online search would surely serve you better.)

I am a Kenyan who identifies as having a disability, as defined by both the Kenyan Constitution and the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. All of these instruments guarantee me and my disabled peers the right to be treated equally as a citizen of this country in all her endeavours of fulfilling the obligations she owes to her citizens.

It should suffice to quote Mahatma Gandhi, who said “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”. Persons with disabilities in Kenya are generally classified thus by the constitution, and a number of measures have been agreed upon on how to equalise opportunities for them within mainstream society.

While Kenya’s National Emergency Response Committee has been holding daily briefings via live television broadcast to update the country on its COVID-19 response initiatives, it has taken various lobbying efforts by organizations of persons with disabilities for the committee to consider stationing a sign language interpreter on-set for citizens who are Deaf, so that they can begin receiving these briefs in a language they understand. Kenyan sign language is recognised as an official language within our constitution for Kenyans who are Deaf, but still it took a concerted campaign to provide this service. It means that, for the period it wasn`t available, this group of Kenyans were left on their own. And no one cared.

Imagine a Kenyan who is a wheelchair user, or someone who needs other walking aids, trying to board a public transport vehicle back home when the curfew hour is nearing! Just recall the reported police brutality that took place on the very first day the curfew was announced and try to imagine how a person with a disability would survive such mayhem. What if they were coming home from work, and couldn’t board the vehicle on time because of the rush: what would happen, given that there is still no protocol for persons with disabilities to be allowed into vehicles on a priority arrangement during this time?

You may not be aware that it was not until 20 April that Kenya’s Directorate of Occupational Safety and Health Services issued an advisory to employers on how they should address the needs of employees with disabilities during the pandemic. In other words, the COVID-19 special measures were in place for a full month while this group of Kenyans struggled on their own, and in the case of those who are employed, doubtless struggled to keep their jobs.

We have been hearing social distancing quite a bit since Covid-19 knocked on our doors, but in the absence of clear protocols on how this should be implemented for those with disabilities- I have a feeling we are being left as collateral damage in this fight. So how does a person with a visual impairment who depends on a sighted guide navigate these instructions, how does he/she know when the two metres distance has been breached either by him/her or someone coming their way and should they be left to fall in a ditch because we are implementing a social distancing requirement to fight Covid-19 and thus they cannot have their sighted guide?

Amongst us, we have colleagues who require personal assistants for our daily living and chores and others on constant medication due to their disabilities, how do the protocols on Covid-19 response cover these different scenarios where most of them are life and death trade-offs? The reason persons with disabilities have been pushing to be included in the Covid-19 response mechanism informed by all these diverse needs which nobody else can represent other than themselves for an inclusive response.

As a country, it is high time we begun treating persons with disabilities as citizens and not second-class citizens whose issues only become live as an afterthought, I am very sure someone with a mental illness in Kakamega wouldn`t have lost his life from lack of understanding by the police who were out enforcing the curfew were we to have proper awareness around disability issues if there was a representative in various emergency response committees both at the county and national level.

The government has announced an ambitious programme that seeks to cover the vulnerable groups affected by the Covid-19 especially those living in informal settlements, our hope is that persons with disabilities who are in need of this support actually gets it and this does not just end up as another public statement that went out to show how this government cares for her vulnerable. Many individuals with disabilities who engage in small scale businesses for their upkeep have been hardly hit due to loss of income since they cannot sale their goods and services in town, others cannot commute and thus being on the cash transfer programme announced by the government would help cushion them from the devastating effects of Covid-19.

I am hopeful that this country will one day accord us equal treatment just as other Kenyans, the right time to demonstrate this can only be during a pandemic such as Covid-19 as it is now, I am sure Mahatma Gandhi would have thought Otherwise-What about you?

The views expressed in this post are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.