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MITOSATH advocates for collective, cross-sectoral approach to uphold disability rights

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By Saheed Afolabi

Majority of persons suffering in the world today experiencing disability stemming from Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), have their rights to live in one way or the other encroached or limited.

As the world celebrates the International Day of Disability, Mitosath(Mission To Save The Helpless) advocates for a more proactive and pragmatic approach in tackling disability rights, occasioned as a result of Neglected Tropical Diseases. (NTDs)

According to the Executive Director of MITOSATH, Dr Francisca Olamiju, there is a need by all stakeholders “to adopt a cross-sectoral approach to uphold disability rights in eradicating NTDs, as majority individuals in the world today experience disability as a result of Neglected Tropical Diseases.

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Its known that NTDs diasbles and disfigures more than it kills, accruing to an enormous disease burden in Nigeria and globally.

Dr Olamiju says “billions of people with disabilities are mostly excluded and left behind. They are denied such fundamental rights as education, healthcare, employment and electoral franchise”.

For MITOSATH as the foremost indigenous NGDO in Nigeria, upholding disability rights, would go a long way in advancing the quest to eradicate NTDs in Nigeria and indeed globally, as the plague of NTDs is an affliction of the poorest of the poor.

This burden impacts on the physical, financial, social, and mental health of those affected. These disabilities include swollen limbs from lymphatic filariasis (LF), blindness from onchocerciasis, trachoma and the likes.

Billions of persons with disabilities are the most excluded and left behind.

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MITOSATH works non-stop to beat NTDs, to ensure there are no more generations of blind people.

“We don’t want to see any more generations where people are disfigured by river blindness and elephantiasis, and we do this by uplifting the dignity of everybody.

Therefore, as we mark the International Day of People with Disabilities on the 3rd of December, in line with the central premise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to ‘leave no one behind’, we call on all stakeholders, governments, public and private sector to collaboratively find innovative solutions for and with persons with disabilities to make the world a more accessible and equitable place, and for disability rights to be upheld”.

MITOSATH (Mission To Save The Helpless), is a Non-Governmental Development Organization (NGDO) committed to improving the quality of life of the poor and rural indigent through advocacy, raising awareness, resource mobilization, energising the collective will of all stakeholders for the control and elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases.

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