The 1.3 billion people living with disabilities globally have a substantially higher disease prevalence, and they also face more challenges to receiving the care they need. While removing systemwide barriers must increase, addressing hurdles along disease-specific care pathways is equally important, say partner Mona Hammami and coauthors. For example, in cervical cancer, because of a combination of health inequities, women with disabilities have a 1.4 times higher mortality risk because they are half as likely as people without disabilities to complete successful treatment.
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A pair of donut charts illustrates the proportion of South Korean women with cervical cancer who experience different outcomes in their patient journey, comparing patients with disabilities and those without. Among the women without disabilities (n=13,582), 46% were unscreened, 4% had no treatment, 9% had unsuccessful treatment, and 41% had successful treatment. For the women with disabilities (n=3,185), only 20% had successful treatment. This group also saw higher rates of unscreened individuals (71%), 3% with no treatment, and 6% with unsuccessful treatment.
Source: Missing Billion Initiative analysis of extrapolated data from Korean Central Cancer Registry, Korean National Health Insurance Service, and Disability Registration System of Korea, as presented in Jin Young Choi et al., “Disparities in the diagnosis, treatment, and survival rate of cervical cancer among women with and without disabilities,” Cancer Control, 2021, Volume 28.
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To read the article, see “Advancing inclusive care pathways for people with disabilities,” September 24, 2024.