The commemoration of the International Day for the Disabled on Monday across the world has some special significance for us in Cameroon.

For several reasons, there is a generalised cultural attitude which tends to consider handicapped children as a curse to the household leading to several types of negligence and discrimination. In the home, they are not given the same attention as other children and in many cases, handicapped children have been known to be kept in hiding or seclusion because parents would not want to let their guests or visitors know that they had such children. They physical condition or deficiencies would rather be attributed to witchcraft even when their origins can be scientifically easily established from simple experiments or observation.

Beyond the family setting, things are no better. Public policy has often tended to discriminate against handicapped people. This public apathy is most manifest in the lack of attention given to this class of citizens, especially in the availability of adapted public facilities, especially for the physically challenged who have difficulty of access to lifts, toilets and the use of steps. Those with impaired hearing or speech do not have special care in classrooms either. They are made to complete with their peers with normal hearing, speaking and seeing conditions.

This situation has led to a phenomenal loss in valuable human capital offered by some of these people for, it must be said that some of the nation’s very intelligent people are recruited from this category. Because of this unjustified and unjustifiable posture on the part of family heads and public authorities, only very little is drawn from the wide knowledge offered by these people. And yet there are abundant cases around the world which should inspire our policy makers. Post-depression America was managed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt from a wheel chair. The current Finance Minister of Germany permanently uses a wheel chair and a senior cabinet Minister in a recent government in the UK was blind and moved around with the help of a trained dog.

The Cameroonian situation is particularly disturbing as we have heard in numerous pleas from handicapped people about the discrimination they suffer from, leading them to demand an outright quota system. In their view, this is the only way to guarantee them greater participation in the life of the nation. Efforts to make public edifices and other facilities such as classrooms, hospitals, airports, train stations and public transportation more user-friendly for handicapped people are underway, promoted by the Ministry of Social Affairs. But they are still too timid given the immensity of the task ahead. It all has to do with changing mentalities. We must always remember that handicapped people are just people like ourselves and that very often, the ordinary person of today could be the handicapped of tomorrow.