The Executive Secretary, FCT Primary Health Care Board, Dr Rilwanu Mohammed, has said that sign-language interpreters are to be deployed to hospitals to assist the deaf to access health care.
Disclosing this yesterday, at a seminar on “Deaf Women Health Awareness” in Abuja, Mohammed expressed regrets that most physically challenged persons were denied access to medical services.
“I heard that most physically challenged persons are denied their rights to medical services.
`”But I know that in our public hospital not all of them offer free antenatal care and delivery services and free under-5 Medicare regardless of physical challenges.
“So, I don’t know why a person will be denied his or her right to health care due to physical challenges,” he said.
Mohammed, who was represented by Sectional Head, Child, Adolescence and School Health of the Board, Dr. Ruqayyah Wamako, decried the absence of interpreters in the hospitals at the moment that would have enhanced effective communication with health caregivers.
He commended the doctors who tried their best to give the physically challenged persons health services.
“It is good to have an interpreter and I will pass that message. We will try to see how we can open a place for that so that there will be no barriers to communication.
“If you are at any time denied the right to free medical services, at where it is supposed to be free, don’t accept it, take it up,” he said.
He said that deaf people should always present their case at inception so that their disability status would be noted on their file to facilitate better treatment from caregivers. (NAN)
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