A holistic national development involves all persons including people with disabilities and various impairments. There is a need to reduce the occurrence of disabilities and provide resources to support persons with disability. Even though a Disability Act was enacted to address all the challenges that people with disability are faced with, the Act may not be a panacea to all the problems without the conscious efforts of policymakers and the general public in formulating programmes and actions to help the disabled. The chapter gives information on prevalence of disability, some characteristics of persons with disability, population with disability, type of disability and distribution of disability by type of locality in the District.

Population with Disability

Table 6.1 shows that 2,539 people representing 2.7 percent of the District population are living with various disabilities. This proportion is lower than the regional average of 4.3 percent.

Type of Disability

As shown in Table 6.1, more than a third (35.8%) of people in the District with disability suffers from physical disability making this disability the most common. Intellectual disability is the second commonest affecting 26.1 percent of people with disabilities. . Other common disabilities deal with hearing and speech. For disability prevalence according to sex, overall Table 6.2 reveals that the proportion of the male population who are disabled is the same as the proportion of female population disabled (2.7%). Further, the most common disability is physical for both males and females though the proportions affected vary between the two sexes (32.0% for males and 39.4% for females). Considering the other disabilities, the male and female proportions vary and follow no clear pattern

Distribution of Disability by Type of Locality

Figure 6.1 depicts differences in disability cases found in the rural and urban areas. It is clear that proportion of the population with disability district is the same for both urban and rural areas (2.7% each). However, the proportion of disabled people with physical disability is 53.5 percent in urban areas compared to the corresponding proportion of 31.8 percent in rural areas.

This difference in the proportion of physically-disabled people by location may be due to the higher chances for disabled people finding work opportunities in urban areas as compared to rural areas. Sight is the second most common type of disability, common in both urban and rural areas but it is higher in urban areas (28.8% of disabled people) as compared to rural areas (22.2% of disabled people). On the other hand, intellectual disability is more prevalent in rural areas (27.5%) than urban areas (19.9%) possibly due to the relatively lower level of resources in rural areas for the detection and management of intellectually-related disabilities.

Disability and Economic Activity

Table 6.2 reveals that 64.0 percent of the total population 15 years and older are economically active whiles 36.0 percent are economically not active. For those with disability, majority of them are economically not active (57.9%) compared to those who are economically active (42.1%). The Table indicates that 40.8 percent of people with disability are employed as against 1.3 percent who is unemployed. In terms of disability type, only 27.2 percent of people with physical disability are economically active of which 25.7 percent of them are employed whilst 72.8 percent of people who are physically challenged are not active economically.

Again, the Table shows that 66.8 percent of male population 15 years and older are economically active whilst that of females is 61.6 percent. Similarly, more males (45.8%) with disability are economically active than females (38.7%).About 29.6 percent of economically active males with physical disability are employed.

Disability by Level of Education

The United Nation’s convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, recommends that persons with disabilities are guaranteed the right to inclusive education at all levels irrespective of their age on the basis of equal opportunity without discrimination.

Detailed information on population 3 years and older by sex, disability type and level of education is presented in Table 6.4. There are 2,448 persons (3 years and older) with disability in the District. Out of this number, 739 people with disability never attended school whilst 1,709 of them ever attended school.

Figure 6.2 show that whereas lesser proportion of persons with no disability (12.0%) never attended school, as much as 30.2 percent of those with disability never attended school. In terms of sex, 9.5 percent of males with no disability have never attended school compared to 21.0 percent of males with disability who never attended school. Again, only 14.4 percent of females with no disability never attended school compared to 39.0 percent of females with disability who never attended school. It could be concluded from the figure that more proportions of persons with disability never attended school compared to persons with no disability.

Regarding the educational attainment of persons with disability (persons 3 years and older), Figure 6.3 shows that of all persons with sight disability, 69.3 percent ever attended school whilst 30.7 percent never attended school. Also, 67.9 percent of people with physical disability ever attended school compared to 32.1 percent who never attended school. Again, for those with hearing problems, 64.9 percent of them ever attended school. It could be concluded that disability that develops with over time with increasing age may not be a major limitation to educational attainment. Many cases of physical and sight disabilities occur with increasing age.

Figure 6.4 shows that the proportion of persons with disability who attended Middle school (39.0%), Secondary school (2.1%), ‘8Vocational/Technical/Commercial (4.0%) and post middle/secondary certificate (2.6%) is higher than the proportion of persons without disability who attended Middle school (18.6%), Secondary school (1.6%),Vocational/ Technical/Commercial (2.6%) and post middle/secondary certificate (1.9%). On the other hand, the proportion of persons with disability (28.1%) who attended primary school is less than that of persons without disability (31.7%). Also 0.4 percent of persons with disability have completed Bachelor degree programmes compared to 0.5 percent for persons without disability.