Vulnerability

Disability

 Introduction 

Disability, according to the GSS refers to those who are restricted in the performance of specific tasks/activities due to loss of function of some part of the body as a result of impairment or malformation. 

This chapter analyses the data on persons living with disabilities (PLWDs) and types of disabilities in relation to socio-demographic characteristics such as age-sex, type of locality and economic status.

Population with Disability

The District has 3, 505 persons with various forms of disability representing 4.5 percent of the total population. There are approximately 4.5 and 4.6 percent of the disabled population who are males and females respectively. 

 Type of Disability 

There are various types of disabilities and Figure 6.1 and Table 6.1 reveal the 6 most common disabilities namely sight, hearing, speech, physical, intellect and emotional. Sight impairment is the highest (34.6%) type of disability in the District. This means that there are about 3 in every 10 persons with sight impairment. This is followed by physical disability which forms a little above a quarter (29%) of the total disabled population. 

slight disparities among males and females with regards to all the disability types. Females with sight impairment (35.7%) are more than the males (33.5%) while males (29.9%) with physical disability are more than females (28.1%). 

 Disability by Type of Locality 

Further deals with disability by type of locality. The urban population shows that 8.2 percent of people live with disability whiles among the rural population there are 4.3 percent. The common disabilities in urban and rural localities are physical and sight impairments. These types of disabilities have high percentages in both rural (sight 36.1 %, physical 29.8%) and urban areas (sight 23.4%, physical 23.4%). again indicates that the female population with disability in both urban (8.3%) and rural (4.3%) areas is higher than the male population with disability in both urban (8%) rural (4.2%) area in the District. However, emotional disability is predominant among females than males in both urban (16.4% male, 22.8% female) and rural areas (17.1 % male, 19.4% female).

 Disability and Economic Activity 

Information on population aged 15 years and older with disability by economic activity status (economically active and economically not active, employed and unemployed) and sex. Out of the disabled population, 61.1 percent are economically active whiles 38.9 percent are not economically active. The employed population has 96.4 percent of disability whiles the unemployed has 3.6 percent.

Sight and physical impairment constitute 37.9 and 30.5 percent of the disabled population employed respectively. 

There are more males with any form of disability (66.1%) who are economically active than females (56.4%). On the other hand, female disabled population (43.6%) who are economically not active is higher than the male disabled population (33.9%). 
Among the female disabled population, 96.1 percent are employed and 3.9 percent unemployed whiles disabled male population are 96.7 and 3.3 percent respectively

 Disability, Education and Literacy 

Information on disability type in relation to level of education and the literacy status of disabled persons is presented in Table 6.3. The table shows that 4.8 percent constitute the disabled population whiles 95.2 percent are the population with no disability. From Table 6.3, the highest proportion of the disabled population has primary level (23.2%) and middle school level of education (22.9%) while the least has only 1 person (0.0%) with post graduate certificate.

Approximately 31 percent (30.1%) of the disabled population with sight impairment have middle school level of education whiles 20 percent have primary education. In relation to education, both male (37.8%) and female (23.8%) who have sight impairment within their respective population have majority of their population with middle school level of education