NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF KOREA Submission to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – July 2022 Article 25 Health 27-2 Medical Accessibility of Persons with Disabilities □ Current status and problems ㅇ The government introduced in the national report the Act on Guarantee of Right to Health and Access to Medical Services for Persons with Disabilities(enforced on Dec. 30, 2017, hereinafter referred to the “Act on the Right to Health of the Disabled) and ‘physician-in-charge pilot project for the disabled’ operated since May 2018 pursuant to this Act, but did not present related achievements. ㅇ According to the statistics on the physician-in-charge pilot project for the disabled announced by the office of Choi Hye Yeong, a member of the National Assembly, 1,146 persons with disabilities participated in the 2nd phase of the project, which accounts for only 0.1% of targeted 984,965 persons with severe disabilities, and out of 567 doctors registered as a physician-in-charge for the disabled, only 88 actually carried out activities. ㅇ The reasons behind the poor performance is that it is difficult to go to the hospital due to the difficulty of using public transportation, and even when it is possible to move to the hospital, it is difficult to enter the building in many of the registered medical institutions of the pilot project because of insufficient convenience facility for persons with disabilities. These institutions do not provide support for the persons with disabilities having difficulty in communicating. Moreover, out of 542 registered medical institutions, 50% are located in the metropolitan area, making it difficult for the residents in other areas to use. The government mentioned in-home health care services as an alternative to limited physical access, but there are not many institutions that actually provide in-home services. The national reports state that Article 9 of the Act on the Right to Health of the Disabled mandates the guarantee of access to and use of healthcare institutions by the persons with disabilities, but that Article is ineffective as it is a dispositive provision. In the 2019 study on the physician-in-charge pilot project for the disabled, only 11.5% of the respondent stated that they are aware of this project. 43