For people with learning disabilities, ‘freedom day’ was nothing of the kind | Saba Salman

My sister and others like her are eight times more likely to die of Covid. Yet so little thought has been given to their welfare

“Freedom day” was a fallacy for people with learning disabilities and their families. While much of England eagerly anticipated Monday’s lifting of restrictions, there was little advance thought as to how learning disabled people, like my sister Raana, would return to “normal life”.

New research shows that learning disabled people are eight times more likely to die from Covid and five times more at risk of hospitalisation. The study, by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Oxford University and Public Health England, is the latest proof – if it were needed – that Covid heaps disadvantage on to those already marginalised. The risk is even greater for learning disabled people from black, ethnic and minority backgrounds.

Saba Salman is the editor of Made Possible: Stories of Success By People with Learning Disabilities – in Their Own Words and chair of the charity Sibs

Continue reading…

Read article at theguardian.com

Article Taxonomies

Categories: ,
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Object of class WP_Error could not be converted to string in /home/webable/www/www/wp-content/themes/webable/content-mcm.php:65 Stack trace: #0 /home/webable/www/www/wp-includes/template.php(792): require() #1 /home/webable/www/www/wp-includes/template.php(725): load_template('/home/webable/w...', false, Array) #2 /home/webable/www/www/wp-includes/general-template.php(206): locate_template(Array, true, false, Array) #3 /home/webable/www/www/wp-content/themes/webable/single-mcm_article.php(15): get_template_part('content-mcm') #4 /home/webable/www/www/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/webable/w...') #5 /home/webable/www/www/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/webable/w...') #6 /home/webable/www/www/index.php(17): require('/home/webable/w...') #7 {main} thrown in /home/webable/www/www/wp-content/themes/webable/content-mcm.php on line 65