Paper short abstract:

The objective of the paper is the reexamination of taken for granted ideas about disability in the Global South through the presentation of self-managed communities of polio-disabled people in Freetown, with a special attention to their health status and to their access to medical care.

Paper long abstract:

The paper puts disability in the Global South in a new perspective through the presentation of self-managed mixed communities organized and run by polio-disabled people in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Its main objective is to challenge mainstream representations describing people with disabilities in Africa as pariahs living on the margin of society. I intend to show that the people living in the polio-homes I studied form well-structured and resourceful communities, participating fully in the sociability, economics and politics of the city. I also wish to propose a re-examination of the taken for granted notion of discrimination and the unintended effects of anti-discrimination discourses. The notion of discrimination in development contexts often implies a connection between "harmful traditional beliefs" and mistreatment. In other words, ambiguous entities, like "society", "the people", or "culture" are made responsible for discrimination or marginalization of people with disabilities. I contend that the negative effect of this framework is that it conceals the structural violence of the post-war liberal state building, deliberately neglecting welfare institutions and public services. The result of a survey I conducted with 116 disabled and 250 non-disabled respondents show that in most domains of life disabled people (or their environment) possess considerable resources compensating for the impairment. One domain where disabled people suffer from undeniable handicap is access to health services. This handicap seems less the result of massive social rejection than that of the inadequacy of the health system with the needs of people with limited resources.