Saturday, May 1, 2010

It’s a BADD DAY! You heard it right, Blogging Against Disable-ism Day 2010!


Tempus Fugit! Times flies as the phrase implies who would’ve thought another BADD Day has gone by?

I remember writing an entry last year in the same exact date, in the same exact location though pretty much I feel like a different person today.

To give you an idea to what BADD Day is, it’s basically a day for blogging about disability related experiences, awareness; empowerment, eradication, discrimination and issues confront a disabled person in this mixed up world.

Somehow, I’ve grown a lot in educating myself about disability in general as well as about my condition having Idiopathic Carpotarsal Osteolysis which is very much rare in the world chances are. As much as that I can say the level of acceptance on my part eventually came on the surface that when you are midst of a tough situation you just know to yourself that this is just a phase or stage of what you are going through. We all go through different stages in our life some brought us to the worst and yet some still brought the best in us.


Since I wrote that entry online I met the wonderful Svarre family from Denmark one day through a message in a social networking site Facebook from Michael that his son Magnus also had the same diagnosis as mine after reading and moved by the information in my blog all about “Idiopath” well that’s how I call myself and I felt it is the much acceptable shorter term for a medical condition which a few people even barely know.

It’s a great feeling to read on a message that people actually read my blog and the fact that a father’s love to his son that despite all the difficulties he’s very much willing to understand of what his son is going through especially in the nature of this condition once you are being struck when you are a kid sooner or later you will feel pain all over your feet, knees, hands and until you can hardly walk in your both feet and knees. It sucks the life in you and you have no one you can ever turned to but your parents who doesn’t even have any idea that their son’s or daughter’s life can never the same again.

It's a great feeling to know that I'm not alone in this battle against disable-ism and its not over yet. There is someone out there who finally heard my voice that I actually can talk to relate whatever we are going through and what every parent has to go through in fighting this idiopathic disease or unknown cause. With all this cause that my own parents had gone through is very much a hard ordeal to shoulder with. As years goes on, I learned to appreciate more whenever I see parent's of special children that have to undergo their own kind of trauma in searching the answers to their child's medical condition.

With all those confusion in my parent's mind, you should expected it because I live in a country where the health and social security system is unstable to provide for its citizen as well for those disabled individuals and not to mention about the education and nourishment.

Let alone these disability statistic in the Philippines speaks for itself as of 2005:


1) There are an estimated 7.5 million Filipinos with disabilities in 2000 based on the World Health Organization’s assumption that 10% of every country’s population has some form of disability. In 2004, the Filipinos with disabilities would reach about 8.3 million.


2) The Government estimates that 70% of those with disabilities live in rural areas where services are often not accessible.


3) Past attempts to include persons with disabilities in national census surveys have not been successful for many reasons, including the refusal of families to declare that they have members with disabilities.


4) The 1990 census of population and housing indicated that there were about 755,000
persons with disabilities, only 1% of the country’s population based on the same census.


5) A national registration conducted by the Department of Health in 1997 showed that there were 469,707 persons with disabilities. This figure was not officially recognized.

6) The persistent armed conflicts and bombing incidents in the southern part of the country are expected to increase the number of persons with disabilities.

Having mention this statistics, it's a wake up call for the people in the Philippines that we are also part of the issue here. This is something to think about especially in the upcoming 2010 Philippine Presidential Election on whom do you think among the 2010 Presidential candidates can contribute to a change for our people and at least to our rotten system. I may not be a know it all person equipped with all the political knowledge but somehow keeping these consideration in mind will definitely make a big difference.

Thank you for reading my entry for this year's BADD Day!

I hope you learned something at the glimpse of my side of the world. Yes, times are tough but only tough people will do. Never, never, never give up! I heard someone said that to me. A well done advice.


Disability Statistics Courtesy of Disabled People and Development

1 comment:

Paul said...

Superb post. Well written and with conviction. You are an inspiring young lady and I salute you - Paul