Mansehra district has highest disability rate

[Naveed Yaseen]

MANSEHRA: There were two to three persons with disability in every fourth house in Oghi tehsil and Mansehra was among the districts with high disability rate in the country, the participants of a workshop were told here Thursday.

Saiban Development Organisation, Handicap International, World Vision and Right to Play, had jointly organised the workshop, on the rights of people with disabilities, under CRAN project. Speaking on the occasion, representatives of various NGOs, Saqib Waheed, Saira Rehman, Jahangir Khan and others said that over 16 million people including 40 per cent children were disabled in the country.

“Mansehra is a district where a big number of neonates were delivered with disabilities because of use of contaminated water, cousin marriages and use of narcotics,” one of the speakers said, adding that there were hardly 15,000 people of all ages with disabilities in the district and following the October 8, 2005 earthquake the figure had risen to over 25,000.

The speakers said that in three union councils of the district including Shamdarah, Oghi and Baffa most of the children were being born with disabilities because of the use of contaminated water and cultivation of tobacco.

They said that 350 were born with disabilities in Shamdarah Union Council out of total 28,000 inhabitants and the ratio was still increasing. They added that to change the mindset and concept of the people, the government should include the lessons in the curricula regarding the awareness and rights of people with disabilities.

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