Ghana Disability Data Disaggregation Pilot Project: Results of Integrating Disability in to Routine Data Collection Systems

There are an estimated one billion people with disabilities across the world , yet there remains a lack of accurate and comparable data on disability globally. This lack of data often means that decisions made by governments and other stakeholders allocate resources in a way that excludes people with disabilities, which reinforces existing inequalities. This is further compounded within international development programmes; as many development organisations do not collect data to measure the inclusion of people with disabilities in programmes at national and sub-regional levels.

In recent years, Sightsavers has been looking at the intersection between its two main streams of work: health and disability inclusion. One of the areas of focus has been to understand how people with disabilities are included within health projects in Africa and Asia.

A pilot project in Ghana was established to understand how data may be collected in a system where community members were responsible for delivering interventions and collecting data on intervention uptake. It was anticipated that the pilot, which tested collecting disability data within a Neglected tropical Disease (NTD) programme, will help to refine the analysis of data, strengthen local Health Information Management Systems (HMIS) and improve programme quality not only in Ghana but in the West Africa region and beyond.