In recent years of natural and manmade disasters, disabled people are being made invisible and rarely figure in policies and programmes. Impairments, by and large, result directly from conditions such as armed conflict, communal violence, landmines, floods, earthquakes, inadequate health care etc., creating inequality, discrimination and fear leading to disability . To overcome the negative social impact of impairments, coordination at international-national and local level is required. This can be done by setting international norms and calling for deep structural change at a societal
level to ensure that the human rights of disabled persons are not violated. International standards are important for local activists to influence governments to take action. At the same time, International Standards must be able to meet broad requirements based on human rights, to ensure that the required structural changes take place.
 
Why do we bring this issue to a global health meeting? Because:

• Disasters not only create impairment, they also further discrimination for already disabled people, creating conditions for the worsening of their overall health and well-being.
• More people become impaired during disasters. How can we prevent or minimize these impairments? We know that the main pathologies related to disasters are respiratory infections, over-infected wounds -- leading sometimes to amputations, spinal injury, brain injury, tetanus cases and above all psychological trauma. This means that disasters directly cause an increase in impairment in all forms increases, and in mortality. Situations of disasters also indirectly may lead to increases in impairment and ill-health, as the health and well-being of disabled people already living in the disaster zones is often neglected and unaddressed.

According to Handicap International, in most of the locations for displaced people in the aftermath of the recent Tsunami in Sri Lanka, there were very few disabled people. The likelihood is that disabled people were disproportionately killed during the tsunami. This was also the case for the very young and the very old.

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