Challenges of accessibility to healthcare services for persons with disabilities in Nigeria: A human-rights and SDG 3 analysis and evidence-based interventions

BackgroundPersons with disabilities (PWDs) face persistent barriers to healthcare access in Nigeria despite progressive legislation and policy commitments. These barriers undermine progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3), and reflect ongoing violations of the right to health. Existing scholarship largely documents these barriers descriptively, with limited application of enforceable human-rights and health-systems frameworks.PurposeWe applied a normative policy and human-rights lens to examine healthcare inaccessibility for PWDs in Nigeria. Using the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality (AAAQ) framework, it identifies systemic failures, locates institutional responsibility, and proposes rights-based, contextually appropriate interventions.Research design and study sampleWe conducted a normative policy analysis and narrative synthesis of peer-reviewed literature, national laws and policies, and international normative instruments relevant to disability and health in Nigeria.Analysis and resultsBarriers to care span all AAAQ dimensions and are driven by chronic underinvestment in disability-responsive services, weak regulatory enforcement, fragmented federal-state governance, limited mainstreaming of disability within health planning, and persistent stigma. Exclusion is particularly severe for women with disabilities, rural PWDs, and conflict-affected populations. Priority interventions-including disability-inclusive primary healthcare infrastructure, health-worker training, accessible health information, inclusive community outreach, financial protection, and participatory governance-are mapped to specific AAAQ deficits and health-system building blocks.ConclusionHealthcare inaccessibility for PWDs in Nigeria is a structural and institutional problem requiring system-wide, rights-based reform. Embedding disability inclusion within core health-system functions and strengthening accountability for the Disability Act are essential to achieving UHC and realising the right to health.