Peru's Poor and Disabled Struggle in the Shadows

[Judi Lynn]

By Andrea Vale

LIMA, May 30 2018 (IPS) - Eighty percent of the world’s disabled live in developing nations, according to a report by the United Nations. Their identities, lives and stories are of course varied – but what isn’t is the stigma and lack of resources they face.

If one were to take a ride up a dirt road high in the Andes Mountains, one would find Roberto sitting propped up against the wall of a barn on the side of that road, watching the occasional truck whizz by. Roberto, who is in his mid-twenties, spends his mornings and afternoons sitting.

If he is not watching vehicles go by, then he is propped up against the outside wall that faces the chicken coops and clothes lines outside of his house; or propped up against the wall that looks in on the room that is his family’s bedroom, kitchen and dining room in one – day after day.

Roberto is disabled with cerebral palsy, and as for many people in the Cajamarca region of Peru, no one can exactly say with what else. He is lucky that his mother has sought care for his motor, verbal and mental skills, in hopes that one day Roberto will be able to sit up, walk and talk on his own. But for most in Cajamarca who are born with physical and mental disabilities, they are either left to wither untreated or to seek help only to find that none exists.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/05/perus-poor-disabled-struggle-shadows/

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