Photos of a 31‑year‑old man carrying his mother on his back at Tiananmen Square went viral on Chinese social media,drawing the praise of millions around the country,but Xiao Ma has been carrying his disabled mother fo...Photos of a 31‑year‑old man carrying his mother on his back at Tiananmen Square went viral on Chinese social media,drawing the praise of millions around the country,but Xiao Ma has been carrying his disabled mother for years and documenting their travels through short videos.展开更多
Objectives:Family caregivers raising children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities(SMID)experience the enormous burden of care.The concept of family empowerment is one of the important assessment indexes of...Objectives:Family caregivers raising children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities(SMID)experience the enormous burden of care.The concept of family empowerment is one of the important assessment indexes of family nursing from the perspective of providing comprehensive support for these families.The objective of this study was to identify the factors associated with the empowerment of families raising a child with SMID in Japan.Methods:We conducted a nationwide questionnaire survey involving 1659 primary caregivers raising a child with SMID through 89 special schools.We assessed the main outcomes using the Family Empowerment Scale(FES).We then conducted a multiple linear regression analysis to reveal the factors associated with family empowerment.Results:In total,1362 primary caregivers were included in our study.Our results show that factors contributing to high FES scores are higher age of the primary caregiver,higher education,greater recognition of regional support,lower childcare burden,higher utilization of home visit services,higher usage of a childcare institution,higher household income,and stronger family bonding.Conclusion:Healthcare professionals should carefully assess the state of family empowerment of the primary caregivers who are younger and those who have low education,low household income,high childcare burden,and fragile bonding with the family.Second,they should encourage such families to use regional support resources for childcare.That is,policy makers should consider ways to promote home visits and institutional services for the care of children with SMID,aiming especially for the provision of well-coordinated care and services.展开更多
Purpose To explore the needs for basic community-based rehabilitation services for disabled persons in Xuanwu District, Beijing, China, and to identify factors which influence disabled persons to accept rehabilitation...Purpose To explore the needs for basic community-based rehabilitation services for disabled persons in Xuanwu District, Beijing, China, and to identify factors which influence disabled persons to accept rehabilitation services. Method One hundred and eight disabled persons were selected by systematic sampling and simple random sampling to assess their needs for community-based rehabilitation services. Results Of the interviewees, 57A% needed the community-based rehabilitation services, but only 13.9% took advantage of it. The main factors influencing the interviewees to accept these services were cost （P〈0.05）, knowledge about rehabilitation medicine （P〈0.05）; and the belief in the therapeutic benefit of the community-based rehabilitation service （P〈0.05）. Conclusion A considerable gap exists between the supply of community-based rehabilitation services in Beijing and the needs for these services by disabled residents underscoring the need for improved availability, and for additional research.展开更多
Objective:To determine the factors associated with activities of daily living(ADL)among the disabled elders post-stroke.Methods:A total of 158 patients were chosen from community health service stations in eighteen re...Objective:To determine the factors associated with activities of daily living(ADL)among the disabled elders post-stroke.Methods:A total of 158 patients were chosen from community health service stations in eighteen regions of Tianjin city by convenience sampling from March to November in 2013.The Barthel Index(BI)and the short-formmini-nutritional assessment(MNA-SF)were used to evaluate the ADL,the nutritional status respectively.Statistical analysis was performed using independent sample t-test,one-way ANOVA,Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis.Barthel ADL index was the main outcome.Results:The mean score of ADL was 50.50±27.125.The multiple linear regression showed that the factors which had significant impact on ADL were stroke frequency,types of stroke,nutritional status,financial status,and age.Conclusions:Disabled elders with recurrent strokes,hemorrhagic stroke,dependent financial resources,older age,worse nutritional status and living with family had poorer strokerelated outcome.Healthcare providers can discover the high-risk groups of disability and implement individualized preventive interventions in accordance with the related factors.展开更多
The human motion data collected using wearables like smartwatches can be used for activity recognition and emergency event detection.This is especially applicable in the case of elderly or disabled people who live sel...The human motion data collected using wearables like smartwatches can be used for activity recognition and emergency event detection.This is especially applicable in the case of elderly or disabled people who live self-reliantly in their homes.These sensors produce a huge volume of physical activity data that necessitates real-time recognition,especially during emergencies.Falling is one of the most important problems confronted by older people and people with movement disabilities.Numerous previous techniques were introduced and a few used webcam to monitor the activity of elderly or disabled people.But,the costs incurred upon installation and operation are high,whereas the technology is relevant only for indoor environments.Currently,commercial wearables use a wireless emergency transmitter that produces a number of false alarms and restricts a user’s movements.Against this background,the current study develops an Improved WhaleOptimizationwithDeep Learning-Enabled Fall Detection for Disabled People(IWODL-FDDP)model.The presented IWODL-FDDP model aims to identify the fall events to assist disabled people.The presented IWODLFDDP model applies an image filtering approach to pre-process the image.Besides,the EfficientNet-B0 model is utilized to generate valuable feature vector sets.Next,the Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory(BiLSTM)model is used for the recognition and classification of fall events.Finally,the IWO method is leveraged to fine-tune the hyperparameters related to the BiLSTM method,which shows the novelty of the work.The experimental analysis outcomes established the superior performance of the proposed IWODL-FDDP method with a maximum accuracy of 97.02%.展开更多
Objective： To investigate the level of health-promoting lifestyle in the disabled elderly in a rural area and to provide useful countermeasures for health care workers and the government to improve the elderly＇ s li...Objective： To investigate the level of health-promoting lifestyle in the disabled elderly in a rural area and to provide useful countermeasures for health care workers and the government to improve the elderly＇ s lifestyle behaviors. Methods： A total of 446 disabled elderly people were recruited and examined using the General Questionnaire and Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II. Results： The mean score of the health-promoting lifestyle was 109.73（ SD = 16.80）, in which 90.6 percent of the disabled elderly demonstrated unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The average score for each of the subscales includedthe following： interpersonal relations, stress management, nutrition, self-actualization, health responsibility, and sports activity. Conclusions： The health-promoting lifestyle of the disabled elderly needs to be improved; health care workers and the government should pay more attention to the countermeasures that can improve the lifestyle behaviors and promote the health of the disabled elderly.展开更多
Background: Accessibility enables the effective participation of disabled persons in public and private areas and the use of urban equipment and street furniture. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the physical ac...Background: Accessibility enables the effective participation of disabled persons in public and private areas and the use of urban equipment and street furniture. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the physical accessibility of toilet facilities in urban and rural primary health care units. Methods: It was a quantitative descriptive study conducted in 157 Primary Health Care Units of 16 municipalities in the Baturité Massif region, Ceará, Brazil. The study took place from August 2014 to May 2015, with a checklist type form, designed from the Technical Standard 9050 of the Brazilian National Standards Organization, specifying the ideal access conditions established by law to allow mobility of persons with physical disabilities. Data were processed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software and organized into tables. Results: Toilets designed for physically disabled people were accessible as the location and signs (59.9%), identified with symbols for males and females (57.3%);however, the doorway width was smaller than needed to accommodate a wheelchair (77.7%). Inside the bathroom, only the forward approach was possible (59.9%). Grab bars positioned on the side and rear walls were inadequate or nonexistent (67.6%);toilet seats (91.1%) and toilet paper dispensers (96.2%) were mostly in inaccessible heights;flush controls in appropriate height (59.2%) and activated by light pressure (58%). Sinks without pedestal (51%), but higher than recommended (80.3%) and without single handle faucets (95.6%). It was verified that the toilets of basic health units located in urban areas had better accessibility conditions compared to those in rural areas. Conclusion: Results showed that the analyzed units presented physical inaccessibility in some toilet facilities, making it difficult or even impossible the accessibility for the disabled. The inclusion of accessibility features in health services for this clientele provides equal opportunities and social inclusion.展开更多
Henan Province is not only one of the provinces with the most POpulation, but also one of the provinces with the most disabled people in China. The characteristics of the disabled People, the distribution law of six t...Henan Province is not only one of the provinces with the most POpulation, but also one of the provinces with the most disabled people in China. The characteristics of the disabled People, the distribution law of six typeS of the disabled, and the reason c展开更多
Sign language recognition can be considered as an effective solution for disabled people to communicate with others.It helps them in conveying the intended information using sign languages without any challenges.Recen...Sign language recognition can be considered as an effective solution for disabled people to communicate with others.It helps them in conveying the intended information using sign languages without any challenges.Recent advancements in computer vision and image processing techniques can be leveraged to detect and classify the signs used by disabled people in an effective manner.Metaheuristic optimization algorithms can be designed in a manner such that it fine tunes the hyper parameters,used in Deep Learning(DL)models as the latter considerably impacts the classification results.With this motivation,the current study designs the Optimal Deep Transfer Learning Driven Sign Language Recognition and Classification(ODTL-SLRC)model for disabled people.The aim of the proposed ODTL-SLRC technique is to recognize and classify sign languages used by disabled people.The proposed ODTL-SLRC technique derives EfficientNet model to generate a collection of useful feature vectors.In addition,the hyper parameters involved in EfficientNet model are fine-tuned with the help of HGSO algorithm.Moreover,Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory(BiLSTM)technique is employed for sign language classification.The proposed ODTL-SLRC technique was experimentally validated using benchmark dataset and the results were inspected under several measures.The comparative analysis results established the superior performance of the proposed ODTL-SLRC technique over recent approaches in terms of efficiency.展开更多
Elderly or disabled people can be supported by a human activity recognition(HAR)system that monitors their activity intervenes and pat-terns in case of changes in their behaviors or critical events have occurred.An au...Elderly or disabled people can be supported by a human activity recognition(HAR)system that monitors their activity intervenes and pat-terns in case of changes in their behaviors or critical events have occurred.An automated HAR could assist these persons to have a more indepen-dent life.Providing appropriate and accurate data regarding the activity is the most crucial computation task in the activity recognition system.With the fast development of neural networks,computing,and machine learning algorithms,HAR system based on wearable sensors has gained popularity in several areas,such as medical services,smart homes,improving human communication with computers,security systems,healthcare for the elderly,mechanization in industry,robot monitoring system,monitoring athlete train-ing,and rehabilitation systems.In this view,this study develops an improved pelican optimization with deep transfer learning enabled HAR(IPODTL-HAR)system for disabled persons.The major goal of the IPODTL-HAR method was recognizing the human activities for disabled person and improve the quality of living.The presented IPODTL-HAR model follows data pre-processing for improvising the quality of the data.Besides,EfficientNet model is applied to derive a useful set of feature vectors and the hyperparameters are adjusted by the use of Nadam optimizer.Finally,the IPO with deep belief network(DBN)model is utilized for the recognition and classification of human activities.The utilization of Nadam optimizer and IPO algorithm helps in effectually tuning the hyperparameters related to the EfficientNet and DBN models respectively.The experimental validation of the IPODTL-HAR method is tested using benchmark dataset.Extensive comparison study highlighted the betterment of the IPODTL-HAR model over recent state of art HAR approaches interms of different measures.展开更多
Mobile communication and the Internet of Things(IoT)technologies have recently been established to collect data from human beings and the environment.The data collected can be leveraged to provide intelligent services...Mobile communication and the Internet of Things(IoT)technologies have recently been established to collect data from human beings and the environment.The data collected can be leveraged to provide intelligent services through different applications.It is an extreme challenge to monitor disabled people from remote locations.It is because day-to-day events like falls heavily result in accidents.For a person with disabilities,a fall event is an important cause of mortality and post-traumatic complications.Therefore,detecting the fall events of disabled persons in smart homes at early stages is essential to provide the necessary support and increase their survival rate.The current study introduces a Whale Optimization Algorithm Deep Transfer Learning-DrivenAutomated Fall Detection(WOADTL-AFD)technique to improve the Quality of Life for persons with disabilities.The primary aim of the presented WOADTL-AFD technique is to identify and classify the fall events to help disabled individuals.To attain this,the proposed WOADTL-AFDmodel initially uses amodified SqueezeNet feature extractor which proficiently extracts the feature vectors.In addition,the WOADTLAFD technique classifies the fall events using an extreme Gradient Boosting(XGBoost)classifier.In the presented WOADTL-AFD technique,the WOA approach is used to fine-tune the hyperparameters involved in the modified SqueezeNet model.The proposedWOADTL-AFD technique was experimentally validated using the benchmark datasets,and the results confirmed the superior performance of the proposedWOADTL-AFD method compared to other recent approaches.展开更多
The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of mental health problems and quality of life among Palestinian disable children. The sample consisted of 391 disable Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip which...The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of mental health problems and quality of life among Palestinian disable children. The sample consisted of 391 disable Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip which was selected randomly from the data base of two NGOs working with such group of children. The age of children ranged from 6 - 18 years with mean age (11.73). Instruments: The children and adolescents demographic data were collected by questionnaire include sex, age, class, and place of residence, Gaza Child Health Study Scales (parents and children forms), and The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory generic core (version 4.0) scale. The results showed that children reported mean conduct disorder was 1.33;oppositional disorder was 5;mean overanxious was 6.75;separation anxiety mean was 6.36;and depression was 7.57. There were statistically significant differences toward boys in depression. According to parents, mean conduct disorder mean was 1.94;mean oppositional disorder was 6.09;mean overanxious was 7.47;separation anxiety mean was 6.48;and mean depression was 9.6. The study showed that mean depression in boys was 10.4 compared to 8.9 in girls. There were statistically significant differences toward boys in depression. Parents of children with physical disabilities reported more overanxious problems in their children compared to other parents with other types of disabilities (vision, mental, and multiple). Also, parents of children with physical disability had more separation anxiety than other groups (mental and multiple disabilities). Quality of life of children was scored by children themselves;mean emotional functioning was 8.24;mean social functioning was 6.65;school functioning mean was 9.17;and cognitive functioning was 8.57. The study showed that mental health problems rated by children such as conduct disorder was positively correlated with emotional and cognitive functioning;oppositional disorder was correlated with emotional, social, and cognitive function;overanxious disorder was correlated emotional, school, and cognitive functioning;separation anxiety was correlated emotional functioning;and depression was correlated emotional, social, and cognitive functioning.展开更多
BACKGROUND Oral candidiasis(OC)is an oral health disease that could influence patients’oral health quality of life.AIM To estimate prevalence of OC among disabled and non-disabled individuals and its potential risk f...BACKGROUND Oral candidiasis(OC)is an oral health disease that could influence patients’oral health quality of life.AIM To estimate prevalence of OC among disabled and non-disabled individuals and its potential risk factors in the Al-Baha region,Saudi Arabia.METHODS An observational cross-sectional study was carried out among 148 disabled and non-disabled participants.The technique of concentrated oral rinse employing the Sabouraud Dextrose Agar medium accompanied with 0.05%chloramphenicol was conducted to assess and isolate candida.Oral examination using the World Health Organization guidelines was conducted to examine participants’oral hea-lth status.A pre-designed questionnaire was also used to evaluate sociodemo-graphic,medical history,and oral hygiene habits of the studied population.RESULTS Out of 148 participants(n=57,38%)had colonized candida.None of the studied population had visible Candida lesions.However,Candida was found in the oral rinses without the subject presenting any lesions or issues caused by Candida(asymptomatic colonization).The most common prevalent OC among participants were Candida albicans,Candida glabrata,Candida dubliniensis,Candida krusei,Candida tropicalis,and Candida parapsilosis(n=35,61%;n=8,14%;n=6,10%;n=5,9%;n=2,4%;and n=1,2%)respectively.Diabetes,smoking,poor plaque,and gingival status were key potential risk factors that significantly associated with candida’s density and presence(P=0.001,P=0.001,P=0.01,and P=0.01)respectively.Disability status had no statistically significant effect on presence and density of Candida.CONCLUSION The prevalence of OC is almost third of the studied population;thus,may provoke a need to develop preventive strategies to reduce the OC rate and establish solid treatment plans.展开更多
Disabled people are the poorest in the rural poor with the biggest difficulty in getting rid of poverty and the highest rate of returning to poverty.They are one of the key groups in rural poverty alleviation work.Thi...Disabled people are the poorest in the rural poor with the biggest difficulty in getting rid of poverty and the highest rate of returning to poverty.They are one of the key groups in rural poverty alleviation work.This is the key and difficult point of winning the fight against poverty.Luquan County is a national poverty-stricken county with a large number of disabled people.Since the implementation of the fight against poverty in 2016,the county has introduced a series of policies and measures to help the disabled to get rid of poverty from housing,medical care,schooling for children of the disabled and income increase,and good results have been achieved in poverty alleviation,making important contributions to the poverty alleviation of the county.Based on field research and interviews,this paper analyzes and condenses the specific practices,main results and successful experience of the poverty alleviation model in Luquan County,Yunnan Province to provide necessary reference for the targeted poverty alleviation by helping the disabled in Yunnan Province and other provinces.展开更多
Objective: This study aimed to 1) compare the body mass index (BMI) and patterns of out-of-school activity participation in young people with and without physical disabilities, and 2) examine the relationship between ...Objective: This study aimed to 1) compare the body mass index (BMI) and patterns of out-of-school activity participation in young people with and without physical disabilities, and 2) examine the relationship between BMI and the activity participation patterns among young people with physical disabilities. Methods: Thirty-nine young persons with physical disabilities (mean age ± standard deviation: 18.79 ± 1.99 years) and 70 healthy individuals (mean age ± standard deviation: 18.64 ± 0.74 years) participated in the study. The diversity, intensity, companionship, location and enjoyment of participation in activities were evaluated using the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE) scale. Body height and weight were obtained and BMI was calculated. Results: People with physical disabilities, regardless of their gender, had significantly lower CAPE-derived scores in almost all types of activity than the control participants (p < 0.05). Moreover, BMI was significantly higher in the group with physical disabilities than in the control group (p < 0.001). Regression analysis further showed that the CAPE score for physical activity explained 17.2% of the variance in BMI (p = 0.021). Conclusion: Young people with physical disabilities generally had lower levels of activity participation and a higher BMI than their healthy counterparts. The perception of enjoyment during physical activities was an important determinant of BMI in this group of participants.展开更多
The objective was to compare the socioeconomic profile and the repercussions for effects on the health of people with physical, hearing and visual of the main Ceará state associations in Brazil. Quantitative stud...The objective was to compare the socioeconomic profile and the repercussions for effects on the health of people with physical, hearing and visual of the main Ceará state associations in Brazil. Quantitative study carried out from March to August 2012 through a structured questionnaire with 120 subjects. Variables were: gender, age, education, family income and marital status. Studies are necessary to examine the effects of sociodemographic characteristics on health. The results indicate that the three deficiencies have different distributions in all age groups (p = 0.001), and auditory and visual obtained the highest percentage in the age group of 18 - 29 years (67.5% and 40%, respectively), while motor in the range of 30 - 49 (60%), if no association between level of education and disability was found (p = 0.553). Family income showed a statistically significant difference between disability (p = 0.044), with lower income in hearing loss (45%) and higher in the visual (42.5%). Studies have demonstrated that people with disabilities are not homogeneous. It is important to examine socioeconomic indicators, and individual needs and characteristics to plan effective action.展开更多
Sign language is mainly utilized in communication with people who have hearing disabilities.Sign language is used to communicate with people hav-ing developmental impairments who have some or no interaction skills.The...Sign language is mainly utilized in communication with people who have hearing disabilities.Sign language is used to communicate with people hav-ing developmental impairments who have some or no interaction skills.The inter-action via Sign language becomes a fruitful means of communication for hearing and speech impaired persons.A Hand gesture recognition systemfinds helpful for deaf and dumb people by making use of human computer interface(HCI)and convolutional neural networks(CNN)for identifying the static indications of Indian Sign Language(ISL).This study introduces a shark smell optimization with deep learning based automated sign language recognition(SSODL-ASLR)model for hearing and speaking impaired people.The presented SSODL-ASLR technique majorly concentrates on the recognition and classification of sign lan-guage provided by deaf and dumb people.The presented SSODL-ASLR model encompasses a two stage process namely sign language detection and sign lan-guage classification.In thefirst stage,the Mask Region based Convolution Neural Network(Mask RCNN)model is exploited for sign language recognition.Sec-ondly,SSO algorithm with soft margin support vector machine(SM-SVM)model can be utilized for sign language classification.To assure the enhanced classifica-tion performance of the SSODL-ASLR model,a brief set of simulations was car-ried out.The extensive results portrayed the supremacy of the SSODL-ASLR model over other techniques.展开更多
Sign language recognition can be treated as one of the efficient solu-tions for disabled people to communicate with others.It helps them to convey the required data by the use of sign language with no issues.The lates...Sign language recognition can be treated as one of the efficient solu-tions for disabled people to communicate with others.It helps them to convey the required data by the use of sign language with no issues.The latest develop-ments in computer vision and image processing techniques can be accurately uti-lized for the sign recognition process by disabled people.American Sign Language(ASL)detection was challenging because of the enhancing intraclass similarity and higher complexity.This article develops a new Bayesian Optimiza-tion with Deep Learning-Driven Hand Gesture Recognition Based Sign Language Communication(BODL-HGRSLC)for Disabled People.The BODL-HGRSLC technique aims to recognize the hand gestures for disabled people’s communica-tion.The presented BODL-HGRSLC technique integrates the concepts of compu-ter vision(CV)and DL models.In the presented BODL-HGRSLC technique,a deep convolutional neural network-based residual network(ResNet)model is applied for feature extraction.Besides,the presented BODL-HGRSLC model uses Bayesian optimization for the hyperparameter tuning process.At last,a bidir-ectional gated recurrent unit(BiGRU)model is exploited for the HGR procedure.A wide range of experiments was conducted to demonstrate the enhanced perfor-mance of the presented BODL-HGRSLC model.The comprehensive comparison study reported the improvements of the BODL-HGRSLC model over other DL models with maximum accuracy of 99.75%.展开更多
Falls are the most common concern among older adults or disabled peo-ple who use scooters and wheelchairs.The early detection of disabled persons’falls is required to increase the living rate of an individual or prov...Falls are the most common concern among older adults or disabled peo-ple who use scooters and wheelchairs.The early detection of disabled persons’falls is required to increase the living rate of an individual or provide support to them whenever required.In recent times,the arrival of the Internet of Things(IoT),smartphones,Artificial Intelligence(AI),wearables and so on make it easy to design fall detection mechanisms for smart homecare.The current study devel-ops an Automated Disabled People Fall Detection using Cuckoo Search Optimi-zation with Mobile Networks(ADPFD-CSOMN)model.The proposed model’s major aim is to detect and distinguish fall events from non-fall events automati-cally.To attain this,the presented ADPFD-CSOMN technique incorporates the design of the MobileNet model for the feature extraction process.Next,the CSO-based hyperparameter tuning process is executed for the MobileNet model,which shows the paper’s novelty.Finally,the Radial Basis Function(RBF)clas-sification model recognises and classifies the instances as either fall or non-fall.In order to validate the betterment of the proposed ADPFD-CSOMN model,a com-prehensive experimental analysis was conducted.The results confirmed the enhanced fall classification outcomes of the ADPFD-CSOMN model over other approaches with an accuracy of 99.17%.展开更多
Objective: Our study is intended to evaluate mobility impairment’s level in adult females, their sociodemographic status, knowledge, and practices related to reproductive health in order to provide healthcare givers ...Objective: Our study is intended to evaluate mobility impairment’s level in adult females, their sociodemographic status, knowledge, and practices related to reproductive health in order to provide healthcare givers and policy makers with tools to meet appropriate needs of these vulnerable persons in Kinshasa, DR Congo. Study design: A cross-sectional descriptive study from March 20th 2012 throughout July 20th 2012 concerned 138 physical (non mental) disabled attendees of 7 centers for disabled adults in Kinshasa, DR Congo. Concerns about extend of the disability focused on parts of the body concerned, functional capacity (self walking, crutches, prosthesis, wheel-chairs) and manual freedom. Participants were interviewed using open-ended questions about sociodemographic status, knowledge, and practices related to reproductive health. Issues concerned included age at menarche, age at first sex experience, marital status, education level, employment status, obstetric history, sex abuse, birth control and sexual transmitted diseases. For statistic analysis OR (CI at 95%) was calculated to seek for possible association between physical impairment and parturition’s characteristics. Results: The mean age of the study group (31.1 ± 5.7 years) ranged from 15 to 40 years. Most were affected by legs and the majority (69.1%) needed crutches or wheelchair for moving. Only 21 (15.2%) were married, most (15) of them with a disabled colleague. Mean parity and gravidity were 2.78 ± 2.3 (range 0 - 11) and 3.4 ± 2.5 (range 0 - 12), respectively. Sex experience was initiated at 17.5 ± 3.7 years (range of 12 - 35), 13 (9.4%) had experienced rape, and 37 (26.8%) had (illegally) aborted. Of the 117 women who had had a child 82 (70.7%) had vaginal delivery. In 24 of 34 cesarean sections fetopelvic disproportion or protracted pelvis was the main indication (68.6%), the risk for cesarean section being somewhat related to involvement of 2 legs. Data concerning the issue of knowledge and practices related to reproductive health were very limited and unreliable. Conclusion: Based on the age at menarche, at first intercourse and having had child reflect obvious interest of disabled in sex and reproduction, even if unmarried. Their limited information on reproductive health education results in unplanned pregnancy, unsafe abortion and risk for HIV and other sexual transmitted diseases. The rate of vaginal delivery is likely to redeem own perception on their health status. This could be basis for adhesion to specific programs devoted to physical, psychological, and social limitations.展开更多
文摘Photos of a 31‑year‑old man carrying his mother on his back at Tiananmen Square went viral on Chinese social media,drawing the praise of millions around the country,but Xiao Ma has been carrying his disabled mother for years and documenting their travels through short videos.
基金This study was funded by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(15K15846 and 18H03093).
文摘Objectives:Family caregivers raising children with severe motor and intellectual disabilities(SMID)experience the enormous burden of care.The concept of family empowerment is one of the important assessment indexes of family nursing from the perspective of providing comprehensive support for these families.The objective of this study was to identify the factors associated with the empowerment of families raising a child with SMID in Japan.Methods:We conducted a nationwide questionnaire survey involving 1659 primary caregivers raising a child with SMID through 89 special schools.We assessed the main outcomes using the Family Empowerment Scale(FES).We then conducted a multiple linear regression analysis to reveal the factors associated with family empowerment.Results:In total,1362 primary caregivers were included in our study.Our results show that factors contributing to high FES scores are higher age of the primary caregiver,higher education,greater recognition of regional support,lower childcare burden,higher utilization of home visit services,higher usage of a childcare institution,higher household income,and stronger family bonding.Conclusion:Healthcare professionals should carefully assess the state of family empowerment of the primary caregivers who are younger and those who have low education,low household income,high childcare burden,and fragile bonding with the family.Second,they should encourage such families to use regional support resources for childcare.That is,policy makers should consider ways to promote home visits and institutional services for the care of children with SMID,aiming especially for the provision of well-coordinated care and services.
基金This research got support by Beijing Education Committee as a key-point project on humanities and social sciences (Grant No. SZ200410025005).
文摘Purpose To explore the needs for basic community-based rehabilitation services for disabled persons in Xuanwu District, Beijing, China, and to identify factors which influence disabled persons to accept rehabilitation services. Method One hundred and eight disabled persons were selected by systematic sampling and simple random sampling to assess their needs for community-based rehabilitation services. Results Of the interviewees, 57A% needed the community-based rehabilitation services, but only 13.9% took advantage of it. The main factors influencing the interviewees to accept these services were cost （P〈0.05）, knowledge about rehabilitation medicine （P〈0.05）; and the belief in the therapeutic benefit of the community-based rehabilitation service （P〈0.05）. Conclusion A considerable gap exists between the supply of community-based rehabilitation services in Beijing and the needs for these services by disabled residents underscoring the need for improved availability, and for additional research.
基金The study was funded by Tianjin Science and Technology Association,China(TJSKX2013-JC06).
文摘Objective:To determine the factors associated with activities of daily living(ADL)among the disabled elders post-stroke.Methods:A total of 158 patients were chosen from community health service stations in eighteen regions of Tianjin city by convenience sampling from March to November in 2013.The Barthel Index(BI)and the short-formmini-nutritional assessment(MNA-SF)were used to evaluate the ADL,the nutritional status respectively.Statistical analysis was performed using independent sample t-test,one-way ANOVA,Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analysis.Barthel ADL index was the main outcome.Results:The mean score of ADL was 50.50±27.125.The multiple linear regression showed that the factors which had significant impact on ADL were stroke frequency,types of stroke,nutritional status,financial status,and age.Conclusions:Disabled elders with recurrent strokes,hemorrhagic stroke,dependent financial resources,older age,worse nutritional status and living with family had poorer strokerelated outcome.Healthcare providers can discover the high-risk groups of disability and implement individualized preventive interventions in accordance with the related factors.
基金The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University for funding this work through Large Groups Project under grant number(158/43)Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number(PNURSP2022R77)+1 种基金Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University,Riyadh,Saudi ArabiaThe authors would like to thank the Deanship of Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this work by Grant Code:(22UQU4310373DSR52).
文摘The human motion data collected using wearables like smartwatches can be used for activity recognition and emergency event detection.This is especially applicable in the case of elderly or disabled people who live self-reliantly in their homes.These sensors produce a huge volume of physical activity data that necessitates real-time recognition,especially during emergencies.Falling is one of the most important problems confronted by older people and people with movement disabilities.Numerous previous techniques were introduced and a few used webcam to monitor the activity of elderly or disabled people.But,the costs incurred upon installation and operation are high,whereas the technology is relevant only for indoor environments.Currently,commercial wearables use a wireless emergency transmitter that produces a number of false alarms and restricts a user’s movements.Against this background,the current study develops an Improved WhaleOptimizationwithDeep Learning-Enabled Fall Detection for Disabled People(IWODL-FDDP)model.The presented IWODL-FDDP model aims to identify the fall events to assist disabled people.The presented IWODLFDDP model applies an image filtering approach to pre-process the image.Besides,the EfficientNet-B0 model is utilized to generate valuable feature vector sets.Next,the Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory(BiLSTM)model is used for the recognition and classification of fall events.Finally,the IWO method is leveraged to fine-tune the hyperparameters related to the BiLSTM method,which shows the novelty of the work.The experimental analysis outcomes established the superior performance of the proposed IWODL-FDDP method with a maximum accuracy of 97.02%.
文摘Objective： To investigate the level of health-promoting lifestyle in the disabled elderly in a rural area and to provide useful countermeasures for health care workers and the government to improve the elderly＇ s lifestyle behaviors. Methods： A total of 446 disabled elderly people were recruited and examined using the General Questionnaire and Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II. Results： The mean score of the health-promoting lifestyle was 109.73（ SD = 16.80）, in which 90.6 percent of the disabled elderly demonstrated unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The average score for each of the subscales includedthe following： interpersonal relations, stress management, nutrition, self-actualization, health responsibility, and sports activity. Conclusions： The health-promoting lifestyle of the disabled elderly needs to be improved; health care workers and the government should pay more attention to the countermeasures that can improve the lifestyle behaviors and promote the health of the disabled elderly.
文摘Background: Accessibility enables the effective participation of disabled persons in public and private areas and the use of urban equipment and street furniture. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the physical accessibility of toilet facilities in urban and rural primary health care units. Methods: It was a quantitative descriptive study conducted in 157 Primary Health Care Units of 16 municipalities in the Baturité Massif region, Ceará, Brazil. The study took place from August 2014 to May 2015, with a checklist type form, designed from the Technical Standard 9050 of the Brazilian National Standards Organization, specifying the ideal access conditions established by law to allow mobility of persons with physical disabilities. Data were processed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software and organized into tables. Results: Toilets designed for physically disabled people were accessible as the location and signs (59.9%), identified with symbols for males and females (57.3%);however, the doorway width was smaller than needed to accommodate a wheelchair (77.7%). Inside the bathroom, only the forward approach was possible (59.9%). Grab bars positioned on the side and rear walls were inadequate or nonexistent (67.6%);toilet seats (91.1%) and toilet paper dispensers (96.2%) were mostly in inaccessible heights;flush controls in appropriate height (59.2%) and activated by light pressure (58%). Sinks without pedestal (51%), but higher than recommended (80.3%) and without single handle faucets (95.6%). It was verified that the toilets of basic health units located in urban areas had better accessibility conditions compared to those in rural areas. Conclusion: Results showed that the analyzed units presented physical inaccessibility in some toilet facilities, making it difficult or even impossible the accessibility for the disabled. The inclusion of accessibility features in health services for this clientele provides equal opportunities and social inclusion.
文摘Henan Province is not only one of the provinces with the most POpulation, but also one of the provinces with the most disabled people in China. The characteristics of the disabled People, the distribution law of six typeS of the disabled, and the reason c
基金The authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Khalid University for funding this work under grant number(RGP 1/322/42)Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number(PNURSP2022R77)Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University,Riyadh,Saudi Arabia.The authors would like to thank the Deanship of Scientific Research at Umm Al-Qura University for supporting this work by Grant Code:(22UQU4210118DSR02).
文摘Sign language recognition can be considered as an effective solution for disabled people to communicate with others.It helps them in conveying the intended information using sign languages without any challenges.Recent advancements in computer vision and image processing techniques can be leveraged to detect and classify the signs used by disabled people in an effective manner.Metaheuristic optimization algorithms can be designed in a manner such that it fine tunes the hyper parameters,used in Deep Learning(DL)models as the latter considerably impacts the classification results.With this motivation,the current study designs the Optimal Deep Transfer Learning Driven Sign Language Recognition and Classification(ODTL-SLRC)model for disabled people.The aim of the proposed ODTL-SLRC technique is to recognize and classify sign languages used by disabled people.The proposed ODTL-SLRC technique derives EfficientNet model to generate a collection of useful feature vectors.In addition,the hyper parameters involved in EfficientNet model are fine-tuned with the help of HGSO algorithm.Moreover,Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory(BiLSTM)technique is employed for sign language classification.The proposed ODTL-SLRC technique was experimentally validated using benchmark dataset and the results were inspected under several measures.The comparative analysis results established the superior performance of the proposed ODTL-SLRC technique over recent approaches in terms of efficiency.
文摘Elderly or disabled people can be supported by a human activity recognition(HAR)system that monitors their activity intervenes and pat-terns in case of changes in their behaviors or critical events have occurred.An automated HAR could assist these persons to have a more indepen-dent life.Providing appropriate and accurate data regarding the activity is the most crucial computation task in the activity recognition system.With the fast development of neural networks,computing,and machine learning algorithms,HAR system based on wearable sensors has gained popularity in several areas,such as medical services,smart homes,improving human communication with computers,security systems,healthcare for the elderly,mechanization in industry,robot monitoring system,monitoring athlete train-ing,and rehabilitation systems.In this view,this study develops an improved pelican optimization with deep transfer learning enabled HAR(IPODTL-HAR)system for disabled persons.The major goal of the IPODTL-HAR method was recognizing the human activities for disabled person and improve the quality of living.The presented IPODTL-HAR model follows data pre-processing for improvising the quality of the data.Besides,EfficientNet model is applied to derive a useful set of feature vectors and the hyperparameters are adjusted by the use of Nadam optimizer.Finally,the IPO with deep belief network(DBN)model is utilized for the recognition and classification of human activities.The utilization of Nadam optimizer and IPO algorithm helps in effectually tuning the hyperparameters related to the EfficientNet and DBN models respectively.The experimental validation of the IPODTL-HAR method is tested using benchmark dataset.Extensive comparison study highlighted the betterment of the IPODTL-HAR model over recent state of art HAR approaches interms of different measures.
基金The authors extend their appreciation to the King Salman Center for Disability Research for funding this work through Research Group no KSRG-2022-030.
文摘Mobile communication and the Internet of Things(IoT)technologies have recently been established to collect data from human beings and the environment.The data collected can be leveraged to provide intelligent services through different applications.It is an extreme challenge to monitor disabled people from remote locations.It is because day-to-day events like falls heavily result in accidents.For a person with disabilities,a fall event is an important cause of mortality and post-traumatic complications.Therefore,detecting the fall events of disabled persons in smart homes at early stages is essential to provide the necessary support and increase their survival rate.The current study introduces a Whale Optimization Algorithm Deep Transfer Learning-DrivenAutomated Fall Detection(WOADTL-AFD)technique to improve the Quality of Life for persons with disabilities.The primary aim of the presented WOADTL-AFD technique is to identify and classify the fall events to help disabled individuals.To attain this,the proposed WOADTL-AFDmodel initially uses amodified SqueezeNet feature extractor which proficiently extracts the feature vectors.In addition,the WOADTLAFD technique classifies the fall events using an extreme Gradient Boosting(XGBoost)classifier.In the presented WOADTL-AFD technique,the WOA approach is used to fine-tune the hyperparameters involved in the modified SqueezeNet model.The proposedWOADTL-AFD technique was experimentally validated using the benchmark datasets,and the results confirmed the superior performance of the proposedWOADTL-AFD method compared to other recent approaches.
文摘The aim of the study was to investigate the prevalence of mental health problems and quality of life among Palestinian disable children. The sample consisted of 391 disable Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip which was selected randomly from the data base of two NGOs working with such group of children. The age of children ranged from 6 - 18 years with mean age (11.73). Instruments: The children and adolescents demographic data were collected by questionnaire include sex, age, class, and place of residence, Gaza Child Health Study Scales (parents and children forms), and The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory generic core (version 4.0) scale. The results showed that children reported mean conduct disorder was 1.33;oppositional disorder was 5;mean overanxious was 6.75;separation anxiety mean was 6.36;and depression was 7.57. There were statistically significant differences toward boys in depression. According to parents, mean conduct disorder mean was 1.94;mean oppositional disorder was 6.09;mean overanxious was 7.47;separation anxiety mean was 6.48;and mean depression was 9.6. The study showed that mean depression in boys was 10.4 compared to 8.9 in girls. There were statistically significant differences toward boys in depression. Parents of children with physical disabilities reported more overanxious problems in their children compared to other parents with other types of disabilities (vision, mental, and multiple). Also, parents of children with physical disability had more separation anxiety than other groups (mental and multiple disabilities). Quality of life of children was scored by children themselves;mean emotional functioning was 8.24;mean social functioning was 6.65;school functioning mean was 9.17;and cognitive functioning was 8.57. The study showed that mental health problems rated by children such as conduct disorder was positively correlated with emotional and cognitive functioning;oppositional disorder was correlated with emotional, social, and cognitive function;overanxious disorder was correlated emotional, school, and cognitive functioning;separation anxiety was correlated emotional functioning;and depression was correlated emotional, social, and cognitive functioning.
基金the King Salman Center for Disability Research,No.KSRG-2023-169.
文摘BACKGROUND Oral candidiasis(OC)is an oral health disease that could influence patients’oral health quality of life.AIM To estimate prevalence of OC among disabled and non-disabled individuals and its potential risk factors in the Al-Baha region,Saudi Arabia.METHODS An observational cross-sectional study was carried out among 148 disabled and non-disabled participants.The technique of concentrated oral rinse employing the Sabouraud Dextrose Agar medium accompanied with 0.05%chloramphenicol was conducted to assess and isolate candida.Oral examination using the World Health Organization guidelines was conducted to examine participants’oral hea-lth status.A pre-designed questionnaire was also used to evaluate sociodemo-graphic,medical history,and oral hygiene habits of the studied population.RESULTS Out of 148 participants(n=57,38%)had colonized candida.None of the studied population had visible Candida lesions.However,Candida was found in the oral rinses without the subject presenting any lesions or issues caused by Candida(asymptomatic colonization).The most common prevalent OC among participants were Candida albicans,Candida glabrata,Candida dubliniensis,Candida krusei,Candida tropicalis,and Candida parapsilosis(n=35,61%;n=8,14%;n=6,10%;n=5,9%;n=2,4%;and n=1,2%)respectively.Diabetes,smoking,poor plaque,and gingival status were key potential risk factors that significantly associated with candida’s density and presence(P=0.001,P=0.001,P=0.01,and P=0.01)respectively.Disability status had no statistically significant effect on presence and density of Candida.CONCLUSION The prevalence of OC is almost third of the studied population;thus,may provoke a need to develop preventive strategies to reduce the OC rate and establish solid treatment plans.
基金Supported by Commissioned Project of Office of Rural Work Leading Group of Kunming Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China "Study on the Poverty Alleviation Model of Kunming City in the Context of World Poverty Reduction"Construction Project of Party Branch Secretary’s Studio of "Double Leader" Teachers in Colleges and Universities of the Ministry of Education of China
文摘Disabled people are the poorest in the rural poor with the biggest difficulty in getting rid of poverty and the highest rate of returning to poverty.They are one of the key groups in rural poverty alleviation work.This is the key and difficult point of winning the fight against poverty.Luquan County is a national poverty-stricken county with a large number of disabled people.Since the implementation of the fight against poverty in 2016,the county has introduced a series of policies and measures to help the disabled to get rid of poverty from housing,medical care,schooling for children of the disabled and income increase,and good results have been achieved in poverty alleviation,making important contributions to the poverty alleviation of the county.Based on field research and interviews,this paper analyzes and condenses the specific practices,main results and successful experience of the poverty alleviation model in Luquan County,Yunnan Province to provide necessary reference for the targeted poverty alleviation by helping the disabled in Yunnan Province and other provinces.
文摘Objective: This study aimed to 1) compare the body mass index (BMI) and patterns of out-of-school activity participation in young people with and without physical disabilities, and 2) examine the relationship between BMI and the activity participation patterns among young people with physical disabilities. Methods: Thirty-nine young persons with physical disabilities (mean age ± standard deviation: 18.79 ± 1.99 years) and 70 healthy individuals (mean age ± standard deviation: 18.64 ± 0.74 years) participated in the study. The diversity, intensity, companionship, location and enjoyment of participation in activities were evaluated using the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE) scale. Body height and weight were obtained and BMI was calculated. Results: People with physical disabilities, regardless of their gender, had significantly lower CAPE-derived scores in almost all types of activity than the control participants (p < 0.05). Moreover, BMI was significantly higher in the group with physical disabilities than in the control group (p < 0.001). Regression analysis further showed that the CAPE score for physical activity explained 17.2% of the variance in BMI (p = 0.021). Conclusion: Young people with physical disabilities generally had lower levels of activity participation and a higher BMI than their healthy counterparts. The perception of enjoyment during physical activities was an important determinant of BMI in this group of participants.
文摘The objective was to compare the socioeconomic profile and the repercussions for effects on the health of people with physical, hearing and visual of the main Ceará state associations in Brazil. Quantitative study carried out from March to August 2012 through a structured questionnaire with 120 subjects. Variables were: gender, age, education, family income and marital status. Studies are necessary to examine the effects of sociodemographic characteristics on health. The results indicate that the three deficiencies have different distributions in all age groups (p = 0.001), and auditory and visual obtained the highest percentage in the age group of 18 - 29 years (67.5% and 40%, respectively), while motor in the range of 30 - 49 (60%), if no association between level of education and disability was found (p = 0.553). Family income showed a statistically significant difference between disability (p = 0.044), with lower income in hearing loss (45%) and higher in the visual (42.5%). Studies have demonstrated that people with disabilities are not homogeneous. It is important to examine socioeconomic indicators, and individual needs and characteristics to plan effective action.
文摘Sign language is mainly utilized in communication with people who have hearing disabilities.Sign language is used to communicate with people hav-ing developmental impairments who have some or no interaction skills.The inter-action via Sign language becomes a fruitful means of communication for hearing and speech impaired persons.A Hand gesture recognition systemfinds helpful for deaf and dumb people by making use of human computer interface(HCI)and convolutional neural networks(CNN)for identifying the static indications of Indian Sign Language(ISL).This study introduces a shark smell optimization with deep learning based automated sign language recognition(SSODL-ASLR)model for hearing and speaking impaired people.The presented SSODL-ASLR technique majorly concentrates on the recognition and classification of sign lan-guage provided by deaf and dumb people.The presented SSODL-ASLR model encompasses a two stage process namely sign language detection and sign lan-guage classification.In thefirst stage,the Mask Region based Convolution Neural Network(Mask RCNN)model is exploited for sign language recognition.Sec-ondly,SSO algorithm with soft margin support vector machine(SM-SVM)model can be utilized for sign language classification.To assure the enhanced classifica-tion performance of the SSODL-ASLR model,a brief set of simulations was car-ried out.The extensive results portrayed the supremacy of the SSODL-ASLR model over other techniques.
基金The authors extend their appreciation to the King Salman centre for Disability Research for funding this work through Research Group no KSRG-2022-017.
文摘Sign language recognition can be treated as one of the efficient solu-tions for disabled people to communicate with others.It helps them to convey the required data by the use of sign language with no issues.The latest develop-ments in computer vision and image processing techniques can be accurately uti-lized for the sign recognition process by disabled people.American Sign Language(ASL)detection was challenging because of the enhancing intraclass similarity and higher complexity.This article develops a new Bayesian Optimiza-tion with Deep Learning-Driven Hand Gesture Recognition Based Sign Language Communication(BODL-HGRSLC)for Disabled People.The BODL-HGRSLC technique aims to recognize the hand gestures for disabled people’s communica-tion.The presented BODL-HGRSLC technique integrates the concepts of compu-ter vision(CV)and DL models.In the presented BODL-HGRSLC technique,a deep convolutional neural network-based residual network(ResNet)model is applied for feature extraction.Besides,the presented BODL-HGRSLC model uses Bayesian optimization for the hyperparameter tuning process.At last,a bidir-ectional gated recurrent unit(BiGRU)model is exploited for the HGR procedure.A wide range of experiments was conducted to demonstrate the enhanced perfor-mance of the presented BODL-HGRSLC model.The comprehensive comparison study reported the improvements of the BODL-HGRSLC model over other DL models with maximum accuracy of 99.75%.
文摘Falls are the most common concern among older adults or disabled peo-ple who use scooters and wheelchairs.The early detection of disabled persons’falls is required to increase the living rate of an individual or provide support to them whenever required.In recent times,the arrival of the Internet of Things(IoT),smartphones,Artificial Intelligence(AI),wearables and so on make it easy to design fall detection mechanisms for smart homecare.The current study devel-ops an Automated Disabled People Fall Detection using Cuckoo Search Optimi-zation with Mobile Networks(ADPFD-CSOMN)model.The proposed model’s major aim is to detect and distinguish fall events from non-fall events automati-cally.To attain this,the presented ADPFD-CSOMN technique incorporates the design of the MobileNet model for the feature extraction process.Next,the CSO-based hyperparameter tuning process is executed for the MobileNet model,which shows the paper’s novelty.Finally,the Radial Basis Function(RBF)clas-sification model recognises and classifies the instances as either fall or non-fall.In order to validate the betterment of the proposed ADPFD-CSOMN model,a com-prehensive experimental analysis was conducted.The results confirmed the enhanced fall classification outcomes of the ADPFD-CSOMN model over other approaches with an accuracy of 99.17%.
文摘Objective: Our study is intended to evaluate mobility impairment’s level in adult females, their sociodemographic status, knowledge, and practices related to reproductive health in order to provide healthcare givers and policy makers with tools to meet appropriate needs of these vulnerable persons in Kinshasa, DR Congo. Study design: A cross-sectional descriptive study from March 20th 2012 throughout July 20th 2012 concerned 138 physical (non mental) disabled attendees of 7 centers for disabled adults in Kinshasa, DR Congo. Concerns about extend of the disability focused on parts of the body concerned, functional capacity (self walking, crutches, prosthesis, wheel-chairs) and manual freedom. Participants were interviewed using open-ended questions about sociodemographic status, knowledge, and practices related to reproductive health. Issues concerned included age at menarche, age at first sex experience, marital status, education level, employment status, obstetric history, sex abuse, birth control and sexual transmitted diseases. For statistic analysis OR (CI at 95%) was calculated to seek for possible association between physical impairment and parturition’s characteristics. Results: The mean age of the study group (31.1 ± 5.7 years) ranged from 15 to 40 years. Most were affected by legs and the majority (69.1%) needed crutches or wheelchair for moving. Only 21 (15.2%) were married, most (15) of them with a disabled colleague. Mean parity and gravidity were 2.78 ± 2.3 (range 0 - 11) and 3.4 ± 2.5 (range 0 - 12), respectively. Sex experience was initiated at 17.5 ± 3.7 years (range of 12 - 35), 13 (9.4%) had experienced rape, and 37 (26.8%) had (illegally) aborted. Of the 117 women who had had a child 82 (70.7%) had vaginal delivery. In 24 of 34 cesarean sections fetopelvic disproportion or protracted pelvis was the main indication (68.6%), the risk for cesarean section being somewhat related to involvement of 2 legs. Data concerning the issue of knowledge and practices related to reproductive health were very limited and unreliable. Conclusion: Based on the age at menarche, at first intercourse and having had child reflect obvious interest of disabled in sex and reproduction, even if unmarried. Their limited information on reproductive health education results in unplanned pregnancy, unsafe abortion and risk for HIV and other sexual transmitted diseases. The rate of vaginal delivery is likely to redeem own perception on their health status. This could be basis for adhesion to specific programs devoted to physical, psychological, and social limitations.
