The Blind Eye on Health Care Services of Children with Disabilities: A Case of Mburahati Ward – Dar es Salaam – Tanzania

Abstract

Children with disability in developing countries, Tanzania in particular, are still confronted with sociocultural discrimination and inaccessibility to healthcare services. This article entitled "The Blind Eye on Health Care Services among Children with Disabilities: A Case of Mburahati Ward – Dar es Salaam – Tanzania" intends to explore the sociocultural factors denying children with disability accessibility to health care services. Constructivism, which allows inductive reasoning, was employed, allowing qualitative data collection. Moreover, the study purposefully selected 12 parents to inform this study using focus group discussion and observing the principle of saturation. The collected data were analysed using a table summarising each identified theme's key findings. Also, the empowerment theory was employed to guide this study, which advocates for sociocultural transformation among discriminated and stigmatised children with disabilities and their parents. The findings reveal that children with disabilities, due to demographic and sociocultural factors, are denied access to healthcare services in the study area. The study recommends empowering disabled children and their parents while focusing on changing the demographic and sociocultural factors denying them access to healthcare services.