A Persons-Centered Approach for Prevention of COVID-19 Disease and Its Impacts in Persons With Disabilities

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers COVID-19 a great threat to humanity and, thus, declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. To limit its transmission, governments announced lockdowns in their respective nations, and recommended control measures, including behavior change. Persons with disabilities (PwDs) are among the population that may be at a higher risk of becoming infected and may suffer serious illness due to COVID-19. Additionally, lockdowns pose immense challenges and have tremendous impacts on PwDs in terms of receiving their daily support. To mitigate these challenges, their impact, and to reduce the risk of infection, it is important to design strategies that can improve the overall outcome for PwDs. This study therefore intends to provide a uniform strategy or guideline using the person-centered approach principles which is perhaps the most feasible and implementable approach to circumvent the challenges faced by PwDs during emergency lockdowns. Two case studies are used as examples. This pandemic also provides an opportunity for health care planners and policymakers in the health sector to implement reforms to ensure disability inclusiveness in potential future emergency lockdowns.