The International Disability Alliance (IDA) urges the World Health Organisation (WHO) to denounce the medical ethical guidelines that discriminate against persons with disabilities in access to intensive care for COVID-19. Download the letter from IDA to WHO (pdf).
IDA is a global umbrella organisations of 1,100 organisations of persons with disabilities and their families, and is aware that “criteria such as ‘dependency’ and ‘frailty’ are used in several contexts to deny treatment, reflecting that the lives of persons with disabilities are less of a priority than others” such as in Spain, United Kingdom and Italy.
IDA calls on the WHO to “take immediate action condemning any form of disability‐based or age‐based prioritization in providing COVID‐19 medical care”, to “encourage all governments to act immediately and to the maximum of their available resources to ensure that no person is denied access to COVID‐19 vital medical care (…) life‐saving equipment or medicine on the basis of age and/or disability, and to “deliver medical treatment triage decision‐making criteria in full compliance with the principles of humanity including equal dignity and non‐discrimination for all.”