TAIF, 15 October 2006 — In spite of a boom in medical, educational and entertainment facilities in the Kingdom, handicapped people continue to remain at a disadvantage, says Dr. Shahib ibn Dafir Al-Shehri, chairman of the Al-Rahma Medical and Charity Organization and the manager of the Rehabilitation Center at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Dammam.
Al-Shehri has prepared a study entitled “Disabled People in the Kingdom: Concept and Application.” He explains in his study that disabled people in Saudi Arabia are not provided services that fulfill all of their needs, reported Al-Watan newspaper.
“There are many reasons that urge specialists to pay attention to disabled people. Modernization has been instrumental in the appearance of new forms of handicaps, not to forget the number of people who are left handicapped after car accidents — the Kingdom has the highest rate of car accidents in the world,” said Al-Shehri, adding, “Birth rates are increasing while mortality rates are decreasing because of the vast development in medicine and health care.”
Al-Shehri’s study makes various interesting conclusions in that services offered to handicapped people are only provided by rehabilitation and treatment centers and that these places do not offer services to all the different kinds of disabilities there are. The study also outlines that most employers in this field are unqualified and that the model used to serve disabled people in the Kingdom as well as in Gulf countries is an old model that was used by the West in the 1960s. The model has since been proven to be insufficient and unsatisfactory and a new up-to-date model has been implemented in the US, the UK and Canada.
The model is known as “The Social Model” and aims at removing all obstacles that prevent disabled people from enjoying what is available to normal people. Al-Shehri also pointed out that the Education Ministry in the Kingdom is now implementing a new strategy that aims to help disabled people and making them more productive. Al-Shehri hopes for these attempts to nourish and succeed.
Though there are no official statistics about the actual number of disabled people in the Kingdom, Dr. Muhammad Al-Tarigi, a researcher interested in this field, estimates the number to be fairly large.
Al-Shehri also talked about the unsatisfactory circumstances of disabled people in developing counties. “It is difficult for families to find services for their disabled members. Society pities disabled people. Therefore, most of them feel shy and embarrassed and prefer not to leave their homes,” he said.
“Rehabilitation centers are being criticized for many reasons. They are available only in cities, they lack specialists, they do not provide sufficient services for handicapped people and they rehabilitate disabled people away from society. There needs to be more research that discusses the needs of handicapped people rather than just collecting statistics about the number of disabled people and the types of their disabilities,” he said.
“Unfortunately we have not seen serious attempts that aim at increasing the awareness of the community so to pave the way for these handicapped people to enjoy their rights as citizens. Disabled people are actually isolated from everything including, education, jobs and entertainment. Further, developing countries do not even include any plans for rehabilitating disabled people in the developing strategies,” said Al-Shehri. He also suggested having programs that help increase awareness about disabled people and how to rehabilitate them.
