Quality of life of women with physical disabilities in Bangladesh

Abstract

Background: Women with physical disability are the important part of our society. In Bangladesh, women with disabilities have historically faced double discrimination because of their disability and their gender. Physical disability affects a person’s physical functioning, mobility, physical capacity and also impact on activities of daily living (ADL). Women with physical disabilities experience various barriers due to their disability. Aim: The aim of the study was to identify the quality of life (QoL) of women with physical disabilities in Bangladesh. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 70 women with physical disabilities who were selected by using purposive sampling technique. The WHOQOL-Bref, a 26 items questionnaire was used to assess the QoL of women with physical disabilities in physical, psychological, social and environmental health domain. Descriptive statistics analysis was done by using SPSS version 20.0. Results: The age range of the participants was 20-77 years. Most of the participants were homemaker (57.1%) and 81.4% of them used different types of assistive devices. It was found that overall perception of QoL (2.94%) was better rather than overall perception of health condition (2.84%). Additionally, the scores of physical, psychological, social and environmental health domains were 21, 17, 10 and 24 respectively. Conclusions: The QoL of women with physical disabilities show that environmental health was better than the other domains and the social relationship had the least score. This suggests that, to ensure better QoL for women with physical disabilities changing the attitude of the society is very important. Key words: Women, Quality of Life, QoL, Disability, Physical disability.