AN ASSOCIATION for disabled people in Zimbabwe is demanding that condom packs be written in Braille to help its blind members to engage in “safe sex”.
Kudzai Shava, a member of the National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH) warned at a workshop in Masvingo that blind people risked “extermination” as many had been sold expired condoms.
“We will surely be exterminated by the Aids pandemic. The notion that people with visual impairments do not engage in sexual activities hence should be left out of programmes on HIV/AIDS should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves,” Shava, who is visually impaired, was quoted as saying in the Sunday News.
“We are also sexually active or even more active than able-bodied people and we need the same protection from the Aids scourge.”
The Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, he said, “should lead a programme to make available condoms that are written in Braille to enable those of us who can read to read”.
He added: “The mere fact that there are no condoms that are written in Braille makes the whole sex business very risky to people with visual impairments. At times we use expired condoms because the dates would have been written in letters we cannot read.”
The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Braille was devised in 1821 by Louis Braille, a blind Frenchman.
Most delegates attending the workshop held last week expressed concern at unchanging perceptions of disabled people as “objects of pity”.
“In some parts of the country, people with disabilities are kept in granaries by relatives while some are abused through the myth that if one is intimate with a person with disability, they will be healed of HIV/AIDS,” Shava said.
NASCOH’s advocacy and research officer, Tsarai Mungoni, said the stereotypes that portray people living with disabilities as “pitiable, pathetic, an object of curiosity, laughable, non sexual and violent” had to be tackled.
He added: “We want empowerment and not rehabilitation. We want inclusion and representation in issues of national importance. The attitude that used to be prevalent long back of viewing people with disability as a curse and therefore deserving to be killed should end.”