Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
22 Aug 2003 17:31 PDT
Hello brilliant-ga,
The reason your question hasn't been answered yet is because it cannot
be answered.
The state of information on disabled persons around the world is in an
acknowledged state of crisis. The United Nations and the World Health
Organizations have been convening workgroups to specifically address
the issue, and to come up with a standardized means of amassing
reliable data for future use.
There are a great many resources on the topic including: (a) very
rough global estimates of the number of disabled (about 7-10% of the
population)(b) detailed estimates and surveys from individual
countries and (c) in-depth reports on the difficulties in using
available information on disabled persons
In general, there is a counter-intuitive pattern in the data:
wealthier countries tend to have much higher apparent rates of
disabled people. Australia, for instance, reports rates of more than
ten percent of its population, while Pakistan generally reports less
than 1%.
The reasons for this great dsiparity have more to do with definitions
and survey methods, than any actual reflection of the state of the
health of the respective countries, or the influence of wealth and
poverty.
The best I can do (indeed, the best anyone can do) is to steer you to
the available resources so you can see the state of affairs for
yourself.
So...I'm afraid I cannot answer your detailed questions. If you'd
like, I can pull out the data that is available for the countries you
mentioned (Australia, Sweden, and a sample of third world countries),
but the numbers will be as wildly disparate as the Australia/Pakistan
comparison.
Let me know if this would be of interest to you, and if so, I will
post the data and annotated links to other available data as an answer
to your question
