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Purpose: This quasi-experimental field study examines the prosocial influences of a children’s entertainment-education television programme, Khushi Ko Sansar, on children’s beliefs and intended behaviour towards people with disabilities in Nepal.

Method: Pre-test and post-test survey data were gathered from 357 Nepali children from nine communities that took part in the study. The children were shown two television episodes in which the star of the programmes, a dog named Khush, befriends and visits people with disabilities.

Results: Post-test results show that children developed strong identification with Khush and adopted his prosocial beliefs and behaviour towards people with disabilities.

Conclusions: The authors conclude that the entertainment-education television programme, Khushi Ko Sansar, provided a positive role model for children who encounter people with disabilities. Implications of these findings suggest that entertainment- education media can improve the treatment of people with disabilities and can promote beneficial health beliefs and practices.

In Nepal, many people live with leprosy-related disabilities. The objective of this stdy was to evalate dierences in socio-economic characteristics, ality of life , perceived stima, activity and participation amon people aected by leprosy as a group and between this group and the general population, and to identify prime determinants of among the leprosy-aected people.

People with leprosy-related disabilities (N=100; 54DGI/46DGII) and community controls (N=100) were selected from Morang district, South-East Nepal, using uota sampling. , perceived stigma and participation and activity limitations were measured using the Nepali abbreviated version of the World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHOQOL) assessment and the Nepali versions of the Jacoby Scale, Participation Scale and Green Pastures Activity Scale (GPAS), respectively.

Total QOL, participation and activity levels of people aected by leprosy were worse than those of the general population. Regression analysis showed that the ability to maintain a family, satisfaction with health, vocational training, se, activity and participation limitations (the laer for QOL only), perceived stigma and living situation (i.e. joint family, type of house) were signicantly associated with a deterioration in QOL and higher participation restriction in one or both of the grading groups.

There is an urgent need for interventions focused on uic referral of people with leprosy, to minimize the development of visible impairments, and social rehabilitation. The laer can be achieved by creating more public awareness, providing (nancial) support for income generating projects and /or vocational training to leprosy- aected people, and by encouraging them to be involved in all community development activities. The current results indicate that such measures would help improve the uality of life of people with leprosy-related disabilities.

A checklist is ideal when assessing young children who are ‘difficult to test’. The Communication DEALL Developmental Checklist (CDDC) was developed by Karanth (1), to assess developmental skills of children up to the age of 6 years, along eight developmental domains, with norms based on an Indian population. Since all checklists depend on rater reliability, the aim of the current study was to establish inter rater reliability of the CDDC. Two senior Speech Language Pathologists used a 4-point rating scale, to assess 40 children with developmental disabilities (across the ages of 0-6 years) on the CDDC checklist. Each rater independently made two ratings during the assessment; the first as reported by the parent (PR1 and PR2), and the second based on the clinician’s own observation (CR1 and CR2). The correlation between CR1 and CR2, as well as PR1 and PR2 for each rater separately, was found to be high, suggesting that the CDDC provides a reliable baseline for the developmental skills of children up to 6 years.

CBR Matrix, proposed in the CBR Guidelines, provides a systematic framework for organising and analysing CBR activities. A sample of experienced CBR workers, active at community level in 7 countries , were asked for information about different activities they actually carry out, so as to understand the applicability of CBR Matrix framework in the field. The CBR workers were also asked to identify their most pressing learning needs in different areas of CBR Matrix.

This study shows that CBR Matrix can be a useful framework to understand field-level activities in CBR projects. The study has identified a number of priority learning needs, in terms of different domains of CBR Matrix, and in terms of different disabilities. It also shows that globally, areas related to advocacy, lobbying, legal protection and rights-based approach, are the most important learning needs identified by CBR workers.