Mr Alexander Sefa, the National Director of the Department of Children (DoC), has urged the public to support and care for children with visual impairments to ensure their holistic development.
He observed that children with visual impairment and their parents or caretakers go through many challenges in society, including discrimination and stigma, which hinder their proper integration into society and development.
Mr Sefa was speaking at a sensitization event at Dandafuro, a community in the Wa Municipality, organized by the Upper West Regional office of the Department of children in collaboration with the Wa Municipal Departments of Social Welfare and Community Development.
It formed part of the implementation of the Holistic Development of Visually Impaired Children (HODVIC) programme being implemented in six districts in Ghana.
In this case, Mr Alexander Sefa is speaking about the ‘proper integration into society and development children with visual impairments’. Rather, the Daily Searchlight would have wished that the topic was about making the public to realize that children with visual problems, and beyond that, children with other disabilities, could become valuable and contributing members of our society.
The fact is that each human being is naturally and uniquely equipped to offer something to society. In fact, those that we believe are ‘disabled’ often have extreme abilities and talents in other areas.
The problem in Ghana, is that we do not expend any effort identifying these talents under the general scorn that once ‘disabled’ or physically impaired in any way, the individual because useless and cannot be made to contribute to society.
These individuals are made to believe, at an early age, that they are ‘unfortunates’ who necessarily must become the care and burden of their families for eternity.
This should not necessarily be the case.
This is why the Daily Searchlight supports the efforts of the likes of Mr. Sefa; we hope that the effort would be extended to educating the general public to come to the realization that those we view as ‘disabled’, could be developed to become even more valuable than other members of our society.
(Editorial of the Daily Searchlight of 14th May, 2025).
