Hesperian Health Guides
Working for change
HealthWiki > A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities > Chapter 8: Sexual health: Preventing sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS > Working for change
Good information about sexual health and about how to prevent STIs must be available to everyone, including women with disabilities. For example, information about preventing HIV/AIDS that often comes through radio or on printed leaflets should be available and accessible for deaf and blind women.
Contents
What women with disabilities can do:
- Meet with caregivers and families of women with disabilities to explain how important it is for everyone to have good information about sexual health.
- Work with health workers and other groups to make sure HIV/AIDS and sexual health services reach people with disabilities.
- If someone is taking advantage of you sexually, tell someone you trust—a family member, a neighbor, a health worker.
What families and caregivers can do:
- Make sure disabled women have information about sexual health and how to prevent HIV/AIDS and STIs. Give the information in a way that is respectful and private.
- Help other parents of disabled children understand that when their children grow up, they will want to have sexual relationships, just like people who are not disabled.
What communities can do:
It is important for everyone in the community to know how HIV/AIDS and STIs are spread and how to prevent them. With this information, people can realize that these infections can happen to anyone and they can act to prevent them. And this knowledge can help people understand that women with disabilities need the same health care services as everyone else in the community.
It is very important to fight against the conditions that lead to the spread of disease and not against the people who are infected. HIV/AIDS and STIs can best be prevented by fighting for fairer social and economic conditions so that women, including women with disabilities, will have more decision-making power, so that families do not need to separate to find work, and so that people do not need to sell their bodies for sex.
- Make sure all people—including women with disabilities—have access to information and sexual health services, including latex condoms, to keep HIV and other STIs from spreading in the community.
- Make sure medicines, clean water, and nutritious food are available for people living with HIV/AIDS.
- Educate people in your community to prevent girls and women with disabilities from being taken advantage of sexually, and to understand that having sex with them will not cure AIDS.
To the health worker:
Include women with disabilities in your health education classes, and look for opportunities to share health information with groups of disabled women who are already meeting together. Always respect the privacy of disabled women. Never talk about a woman’s problem with others—not even with her family—unless the woman gives you permission.
- Explain how STIs and HIV/AIDS are passed and how to prevent them.
- Show how to use the condom for men and the condom for women.
- Learn about the possible problems some women with disabilities may have in taking certain medicines to treat STIs.
- Look for signs of sexual abuse when you see a woman for any health problem.
- Make sure women with disabilites have access to counseling and testing for HIV.
Health workers can let parents of disabled children know that children who learn about STIs including HIV/AIDS will make safe choices later on when they grow up and start to have sex.