More than 40 women and girls with disabilities will be empowered to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights as part of the “Inclusive and Accessible for All: A Multi-Component Approach to Advancing the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Women and Girls with Disabilities”. As a result of the project’s activities, women and girls with disabilities will have the opportunity to pass on the knowledge they have gained about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) to other women and girls with disabilities, as well as to others in the community. The project was launched on Wednesday, October 13, 2021 by the Reproductive Health Training Center (RHTC) during an online roundtable discussion.

Dr. Rodica Comendant, RHTC director, says there are about 89,000 women and girls with disabilities in Moldova, about 2.5% of the total population. The figure is similar to other countries, but in Moldova these people “don’t seem to exist”, and one of the signs is that people with disabilities “don’t appear in public spaces, they are not with us”, the reason being the lack of access.

“Women with disabilities have real difficulties in getting to a doctor, a fundamental right, even to a family doctor, and experience even more difficulties in getting to a gynecologist. If and when they manage to overcome physical barriers, once they get there they can face various other barriers: a woman with a disability, for example, has been told ‘I don’t have to put you in the gynecological chair…’. Indeed, these chairs, in turn, are not adapted to the needs of people with disabilities. Women and girls with disabilities report that gynecological services are often unfriendly. Other women have been told that they cannot have children or, if they do, they will be born disabled. With the project launched today, we want to make a change and get statistics on the medical institutions that provide services for this portion of the population and find out how many of them are adapted to the needs of people with disabilities,” says Dr. Rodica Comendant.

The RHTC director added that gynecological chairs adapted for women with disabilities are only available in a few adult and youth-friendly centers and it is not known how things are in public institutions. She reported that women and girls with disabilities do not know their rights and therefore they feel embarrassed, do not ask to be treated without discrimination, i.e. this is also one of the aims of the project – to increase their self-confidence. After the trainings, Rodica Comendant hopes that “most of the girls and women will have more knowledge about their sexual and reproductive health and rights, they will also know where to go to exercise these rights”. The project team is also confident that some of the project beneficiaries “will feel empowered enough to pass on their knowledge.”

The project will train around 1,000 family doctors and social workers on how to prioritize the rights of people with disabilities and how to communicate with them. At the end of the project, indicators will be developed that will reflect more conclusively how the health system responds to the needs of this population.

Tatiana Zatîc, Head of Primary and Community Health Care Policy Department at the Ministry of Health, assessed the value of the Project as “a very important one as it relates to access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services for women and girls with disabilities”. According to her, the project will be “another important step towards ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health services”. The project is considered highly goal-oriented, which can contribute to better access and quality services for women and girls with disabilities, as well as better training of health professionals and beneficiaries. Mrs. Zatîc assured that the Ministry of Health will support the achievement of these objectives.

Reproductive Health Program Analyst at UNFPA Moldova, Eugenia Berzan, sees the launch of a new project addressing sexual and reproductive rights and health of people with disabilities as “a logical continuation of the series of interventions carried out over the last five years.” She mentioned the project implemented by RHTC with the support of the Embassy of Finland in Bucharest in 2017, which was followed by a series of advocacy activities to raise public awareness about the importance of creating universal access and protection for people with disabilities in terms of sexual and reproductive health. At the same time, the UNFPA Moldova representative stressed that “there is still a long way to go to reach the goal of leaving no one behind,” and to this end “we need to ensure that all medical institutions have adapted sanitation facilities and that there is a person in the medical institutions who can provide translation in sign language”. “The project being launched today has the right approach: it is focused on strengthening the capacity of both the health system and social workers, which will certainly improve collaboration between these two sectors,” said Eugenia Berzan.

Ludmila Iachim, Executive Director of the Association “MOTIVATIE” in Moldova, welcomed the initiative to continue the implementation of activities launched in 2017. She believes that the challenges of women, girls, and men with disabilities in exercising their sexual and reproductive rights is a priority and is still taboo. “I hope that through this phase of the project, all challenges will be brought to the table and the authorities will continue to identify solutions for improving access to reproductive health services. The association will mobilize girls, women and men with disabilities to be active, to talk about their problems, to knock on the doors of the authorities – because steps have been taken in this area, but there is more work to be done,” added Ludmila Iachim.

Lilia Puzderi, president of A.O. PRO-TINERET, a person with special needs, reported from her own experience that women with disabilities face a lack of information on family planning, a lack of information on institutions and specialists they can turn to. “The most common reason is shame, because you can’t have these discussions with just anyone. Unfortunately, living between the Leova and Comrat districts, we face them with the lack of quality services for women in the field of gynecology and there are no good specialists to turn to in solving this problem. The Mother and Child Institute has specialists they can talk to, but at the district level there are not many well-adapted, ground-floor clinics, nor are there many specialists who can provide consultations for people with disabilities,” said Lilia Puzderi.

According to the 2017 RHTC-coordinated situational analysis, the legislative, regulatory and policy framework is not sufficiently adjusted to guarantee and ensure respect for the sexual and reproductive rights of persons with disabilities in Moldova. However, women and girls with disabilities in the Republic of Moldova believe, in most cases, that they can form a family and give birth to children, and that disability should not be a barrier to the realization of these rights. Access to reproductive health services is considered by women with disabilities as “difficult” because institutions providing reproductive health services do not provide physical access, there is a lack of gynecological clinics adapted to the needs of women with disabilities, and medical staff are not sensitized to and trained in the sexual and reproductive rights of people with disabilities. According to the 2017 evaluation, the last of its kind, in many cases medical staff behave in a discriminatory manner, women with disabilities do not initiate discussions about SRH with medical staff, and society is uninformed about the field of ,,disability”, who people with disabilities are, what their needs and abilities are.

The project “Inclusive and Accessible for All: A Multi-Component Approach to Advancing the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Women and Girls with Disabilities“, is implemented by the Reproductive Health Training Center (RHTC) and funded by the Embassy of Finland in Bucharest under the Fund for Local Cooperation. The project is 18 months long.

Below you can access the roundtable presentation as well as a full recording of the online event.

• Incluziv și accesibil pentru toți: O abordare multi-componentă pentru promovarea drepturilor și sănătății sexuale și reproductive a femeilor și fetelor cu dizabilități
• Dispozitia nr. 749-d din 05.10 2021 c u privire la organizarea mesei rotunde dedicate lansării proiectului „Incluziv și accesibil pentru toți…”

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