Kathmandu, June 17

The findings of the ‘Study on Disability and Earthquake in Bhaktapur Municipality’ have painted a dismal picture of the quality of life of persons with disabilities.

“Among the individuals with disability, 42 per cent say their quality of life has not changed after the earthquake of April 25, while this is 33 per cent for the control group.

This indicates that factors other than the earthquake were already affecting the persons with disability in an adverse way even before the devastating earthquake,” said the study report released in Kathmandu today.

The study was conducted by Disability Research Centre, School of Arts under Kathmandu University with support from UNICEF. “Persons from disability group are facing 4.8 times more difficulty than the control group for their self-care.

School enrolment ratio is lowest among female in the disability group,” Prof Dr Mahesh Banskota, Dean, School of Art in KU said of the report.

The findings also show that persons with disabilities have reported greater ease of access to service provided by traditional healers as compared to modern health services,where they regularly face problems of lack of information about location of different services, high cost of service, long waiting periods and misbehaviour of health professionals.