On June 13, the NGO IPAS organized a meeting in Kinshasa to celebrate International Albinism Awareness Day. This activity aimed to inform people with this disease about the sexual and reproductive health rights available to them. Speakers stressed the importance of raising awareness among people with the disease to accept themselves in order to thrive in society.
Sub-Saharan Africa has a high prevalence of the condition of albinism, estimated at between 1 in 5,000 and 1 in 15,000 cases. According to IPAS, sexual and reproductive health and rights issues affect albino women more than men. men.
An NGO president, Marie-Thérèse Matayo, considers that the family is crucial to promote the development of people with this disease. For her, a treatment similar to that which albino children offer to their black brothers or sisters is the starting point for them to feel good about themselves and to assert themselves as individuals.
During the meeting, people with albinism shared their experience of discrimination, including family rejection and isolation. The event aimed to raise awareness in the albino and non-albino community about sexual and reproductive health rights, to remove all barriers around albinism, to encourage albinos to go beyond their disability, and to facilitate access to safe abortion care services for albino women.
This International Albinism Awareness Day is an initiative aimed at raising awareness on a relatively unknown subject and which affects populations increasingly weakened by the prevalence of the disease, in particular women and children.