There is growing international concern that people with intellectual disabilities, many of whom have compromised health, are particularly vulnerable to infection by COVID-19. Yet marginalisation echoes through war, civil conflicts, and crises, when families and institutional staff may feel forced to abandon the most vulnerable in order to protect the majority (Rohwerder, Citation2013). This makes it especially important that governments arrange to identify people with intellectual disabilities, and make specialist provision for them in all times of crisis. They must do so to fulfil the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) (United Nations, Citation2006).
One of JIDD’s Associate Editors, Professor Julian Trollor, Chair of Intellectual Disability Mental Health at the School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, has led the development of a position statement on COVID-19 and intellectual disability. In association with the Council for Intellectual Disability (CID), Inclusion Australia and the Australian Association for Developmental Disability Medicine (AADDM), this calls for concerted action to ensure the right to access COVID-19 screening, prevention and health care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
As Editor of JIDD I have endorsed this statement: you can help by viewing and endorsing it too.
https://3dn.unsw.edu.au/news/endorse-our-position-statement-covid-19
References
- Rohwerder, B. (2013). Intellectual disabilities, violent conflict and humanitarian assistance: Advocacy of the forgotten. Disability & Society, 28(6), 770–783. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.808574
- United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). (2006). https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html