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Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness, and facial cleanliness has been associated with reduced odds of trachomatous inflammation and Chlamydia trachomatis infection.  This study reports on the results of a program integrating face washing into a school-based handwashing promotion program in Turkana County, Kenya

American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 2019 Oct;101(4):767-773

doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.19-0205.

This publication draws together research and learning from around the world, in papers which highlight the need for inclusive education and some of the steps being taken to implement it. 

The settings brought to life here reveal the work of teachers, leaders and policy makers in geographically and culturally diverse situations. In each of the chapters we see the challenges they face and the significant efforts they make to ensure access to, and engagement with, a quality education for all children. The collection includes 15 case studies:

Special educational needs and disability section:

• Teaching for All: mainstreaming inclusive education in South Africa
• Successful inclusive education starts with teachers: what have we learned? A multi-country case study
• Teaching English as a second language to the visually impaired in disadvantaged contexts: a case study from Chiapas, Mexico
• The Theatre of the Classroom

Displaced populations section

• Teaching on the run: safe learning spaces for internally displaced persons
• Developing resilience through English language teaching in youth centres across Iraq
• Capacity building for inclusive classrooms: the Living Together training
• Integrating Syrian refugee children and their parents into Lebanese early education systems

Gender and inclusion in the classroom section

• A gender equality and social inclusion approach to teaching and learning: lessons from the Girls’ Education Challenge
• Teacher development and gender equality in five Nigerian states
• Creating gender-inclusive schools in Turkey: the ETCEP project in action
• Education, English language, and girls’ development: exploring gender-responsive policies and practices in Nepal

Minority ethnic groups in the classroom

• Social inclusion and the role of English language education: making a transition from school to higher education in India
• Storytelling for diverse voices
• Inclusive education in marginalised contexts: the San and Ovahimba learners in Namibia

Humanity & Inclusion (HI) and iMMAP conducted a study concerning with the lack of disability data in the Syria crisis context,  which aimed to:

• Provide statistically reliable prevalence of disability as well as disability disaggregated data indicators on access to services.
• Increase understanding of the situation of Syrian refugees with disabilities and their households, compared to their peers without disabilities, in relation to the access to services including education, and key barriers experienced in accessing these services.
• Recommend inclusive actions to be prioritized by humanitarian actors.

The study conducted a literature review, quantitative data collection as well as qualitative data collection. Quantitative data was collected from 6,381 persons of randomly sampled 1,159 households in Azraq and Zaatari camps and Irbid between October 2017 and January 2018. Twenty-five Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and 3 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were also conducted between November 2017 and January 2018 to elicit deeper insights on the educational situation of children with and without disabilities

This learning resource is the result of a partnership between World Vision Australia and CBM Australia that aims to improve inclusion of people with disabilities in World Vision’s Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) initiatives, including in Sri Lanka. The guidelines are based on experiences and observations from World Vision’s implementation of the Rural Integrated WASH 3 (RIWASH 3) project in Jaffna District, Northern Province, funded by the Australian Government’s Civil Society WASH Fund 2. The four year project commenced in 2014. It aimed to improve the ability of WASH actors to sustain services, increase adoption of improved hygiene practices, and increase equitable use of water and sanitation facilities of target communities within 11 Grama Niladari Divisions (GNDs) in Jaffna District.

To support disability inclusion within the project, World Vision partnered with CBM Australia. CBM Australia has focused on building capacities of partners for disability
inclusion, fostering connections with local Disabled People’s Organisations, and providing technical guidance on disability inclusion within planned activities. World Vision also partnered with the Northern Province Consortium of the Organizations for the Differently Abled (NPCODA) for disability assessment, technical support and capacity building on inclusion of people with disabilities in the project.

HYGIENE AT HOME FOR PEOPLE WITH HIGH SUPPORT NEEDS
This document is one of two developed in the Jaffna District and describes strategies that used to assist households and individuals in hygiene tasks at home. The strategies were designed to be low cost and were developed using locally available materials and skills in the Jaffna District of Sri Lanka.

NOTE: The development of this learning resource was funded by the Australian Government's Civil Society WASH Fund 2.

A short overview is presented of the experience of children's participation in inclusive education in Rwanda

Presented at the People at the Centre seminar, Dec 2017

This note provides an analysis of gaps in educational opportunities for children with disabilities. It also measures the impact at the margin of exclusion related to various types of disabilities on education outcomes for children. Four main outcomes are considered: whether children ever enroll in school, whether they complete their primary education, whether they complete their secondary education, and whether they are literate. The analysis is implemented using the most recent census data available for a total of 19 countries.

"Cerebral palsy is the most common cause of physical disability in children worldwide, and yet in most low resource settings there are few services available to support children with cerebral palsy or their families. Research is required to understand the effectiveness of community and/or home based programmes to address this gap. This 2-year study aimed to evaluate a participatory caregiver training programme called ‘Getting to know cerebral palsy’ in Ghana. The training programme consisted of a monthly half-day support group with training, and a home visit, delivered across eight sites in Ghana over 10 months. A total of 76 families and children were included at baseline and 64 families followed up one year later at endline. Children were aged between 18months and 12 years with a mean of 3.8 years and a range of severity of cerebral palsy. Nearly all (97%) the caregivers were female and the father was absent in 51% of families. The study was a pre-post intervention design using mixed methods to evaluate the impact. A baseline and endline quantitative survey was conducted to assess caregiver quality of life (QoL) and knowledge about cerebral palsy and child feeding, health, and nutrition outcomes. Qualitative data was collected to explore the impact and experiences of the training programme in more depth".

This report, produced by the University of Sydney’s Centre for Disability Research and Policy (CDRP),
uses data collected in rounds four and five of UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys programme (MICS) to describe the wellbeing of young children with and without developmental delay in six Asian countries. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) were used as a framework for identifying indicators of child wellbeing.

The report, authored by CDRP Disability and Inequity Stream Leader Professor Eric Emerson with Dr Amber Savage of the Family and Disability Studies Initiative, University of Alberta, Canada and CDRP Director Professor Gwynnyth Llewellyn, found that children with Developmental Delay in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam are more likely than their peers to:
• Be living in poverty (SDG1). In five out the six countries children with developmental delay were more likely to be living in poverty than their peers
• Experience hunger (SDG2). In all six countries children with developmental delay were more likely to have experienced persistent severe hunger than their peers
• Suffer poor health (SDG3). On three indicators (poor peer relationships, diarrhoea and fever) children with developmental delay were more likely to have poor health than their peers. On three indicators (obesity, aggression and acute respiratory infections) there was no systematic difference between children with and without developmental delay.
• Experience barriers to quality education (SDG4). On all four indicators (attendance at early childhood education centre, family support for learning, access to learning materials in the home, maternal level of education) children with developmental delay were more disadvantaged than their peers.
• Experience barriers to clean water and sanitation (SDG6). On two indicators (improved sanitation, place to wash hands) children with developmental delay were more disadvantaged than their peers. On one indicator (improved drinking water) there was no systematic difference between children with and without developmental delay.

The authors noted that “Since the development of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1998, increased attention has been paid to monitoring the well-being of children. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and UNCRC both contain explicit provisions regarding the rights of children with disabilities. These impose obligations on governments to act to ensure that children with disabilities enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other children. In order to promote the visibility of children with disabilities, enable better policy, and monitor progress, disaggregation of data related to children’s well-being on the basis of disability is needed."

An assessment was carried out of the adaptation and scaling-up of an intervention to improve the visual health of children by training teachers in screening in the Apurimac region, Peru. In a pilot screening programme in 2009–2010, 26 schoolteachers were trained to detect and refer visual acuity problems in schoolchildren in one district in Apurimac. To scale-up the intervention, lessons learnt from the pilot were used to design strategies for: (i) strengthening multisector partnerships; (ii) promoting the engagement and participation of teachers and (iii) increasing children’s attendance at referral eye clinics. Implementation began in February 2015 in two out of eight provinces of Apurimac, including hard-to-reach communities. An observational study of the processes and outcomes of adapting and scaling-up the intervention was made. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were made of data collected from March 2015 to January 2016 from programme documents, routine reports and structured evaluation questionnaires completed by teachers. Partnerships were expanded after sharing the results of the pilot phase. Training was completed by 355 teachers and directors in both provinces, belonging to 315 schools distributed in 24 districts. Teachers’ appraisal of the training achieved high positive scores. Outreach eye clinics and subsidies for glasses were provided for poorer families. 

Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Volume 94, Number 9, September 2016, 633-708

http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.15.163634