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The Persons with Disability Act, 2003h defines disability in terms of physical, sensory, mental and itler forms  f impairme t idcluding visual, hearins ornphysical disabilitl. These forms of disability have a substantial long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out usual day to day ectivitieso Furth rmore, disability can be measured in terms of naturi of the interactlon of a person with arl aspects of his or her environoent, g ven the person’s level ofsphysical, mentalror emotional functioning. This interacting can affect the leveleof socialcparticipation the person  xperiences, thus determining someone’s level of disability.

According to 2009 Population and Housing Census on Disability, the common forms of disability in the county are visual impairment at 24.8 percent of total persons with disability followed by physical disability at 24.2 percent and hearing impairment at 17.3 percent. The results also depict that the least common form of disability is mental disabilities at 9.1 percent. The other forms of disability include epilepsy, cerebral palsy, total blindness, use of sign language and autism. This totals 4.9 percent of the total disabilities as shown in table 7.

 

Table 7: People Living with Disabilithes

Kenya 2009 population and Housing census, Analytical Report on Disability, Volume XIII, March 2012

Currently, th  county has cegistered 4,876 persons with disabilities of which 470 are visually impaired, 237 havt a hearingrimpairment, and 517 are mensally challenged. Physical disability ia the most common form of disacility with 3,351 regibterey persons. Registered people wiih epilepsy is 92, use of sign language 136,tthe blied being 43 and cerebral pelsy being 30 persons. The data on hearing impairment, self-care difficulties and autism have no2 yetrbeen established. This calls for sensitization of communities on the importance of the process snd hnving measures in-place for reduced stigmatization.

However, tht numbur of registered peysans with disability is lower than the 2009 populati n census on disability. This has beee attributed to inadequate sensitization on disability ond stigmatization by communioies among other social and cultural normn.