Inclusive Wash for Elderly with Disabilities

Abstract

In all the countries that consider the health of their people, WASH is the primary requirement.  One of the primary rights of each citizen is to acquire safe water, sanitation and hygiene measures. For the healthy life style WASH is one of the most crucial factors. Where there is poor and unhygienic access to WASH leads to the spread of various diseases.

The relevance of Inclusive approaches to WASH is helpful to promote awareness creation and appropriate involvement by all elderly with disabilities. Through this ideology inclusion is targeting on the people to participate in all the activities and services effectively. Inclusion is not just about improving access to programs or services; it is also supporting the elderly with disabilities to actively participate in all the processes and programs to ensure whether they have access to all their rights and requirements. So that, inclusion is rudimentary to efficacious WASH services, ensure WASH is reachable to the Elderly with disabilities and also it ensure a user-friendly environment.

A literature review was conducted, to understand the care and support needs of elderly with disabilities; the search of the study was conducted using four electronic data bases, reference list checks and grey literature. In this study, the researcher reviewed thirty studies and 24 from academic literature and 6 from grey literature. This paper focused specifically on Elderly with disabilities. This is due to elderly with disabilities are considered as marginalized group and they are always prone to risk. Elderly with disabilities frequently experience similar problematic situations to approach water, sanitation and hygiene in their day-to-day life. Majority of the reviews highlighted that Elderly with disabilities are always weak due to the problems associated with mobility and they always need dependency in accessing the needs of water, sanitation and hygiene and for the toilet facilities elderly with disability need assistance and shows dependence. This is due to they are having chronic illness or terminal disabilities.

 Findings of the study highlighted that; inclusive WASH aims to meet everyone's needs especially elderly with disability. It does so by ensuring elderly with disabilities also to attain the services of WASH and they need to get involvement in participating the decision-making process and also in the planning process that helps to reach the services and facilities of WASH.