Lighthouses

Globally, there are at least 1.3 billion people with disabilities, making up 16% of the population. Despite that, people with disabilities face significant barriers to access to healthcare and suffer from worse health outcomes on multiple dimensions. For example, people with disabilites experience 2.4 times higher mortality and are 3 times more likely to have diabetes, and 2 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS.

To address these challenges, the Missing Billion Initiative is collaborating with governments around the world to build world-class lighthouses for disability-inclusive healthcare, where lighthouses are collaborations at the system and facility level to transform healthcare systems to best-in-class, inclusive healthcare journeys.

What is a Lighthouse?

Building a lighthouse involves leveraging three of the tools that the MBI has developed to assess healthcare systems from various dimensions and propose tailored interventions to fill any gaps detected:

• System Level Assessment: An assessment that identifies opportunities to improve disability inclusivity at the health system level

• Facility Level Assessment: An assessment that focuses on disability inclusion gaps within healthcare facilities such as out-patient clinics and hospitals and identifies areas of improvement

• Healthcare Worker Training Survey: A survey that identifies the training needs of various cadres of healthcare workers