This year's International Day of Persons with Disabilities is dedicated to social inclusion and poverty reduction, and the best way of including people with serious disabilities into society is enabling them to live independently, SOIH president Zorislav Bobus said, adding that the role of personal assistants was unavoidable in that process.
Thanks to support from the Ministry of Family Affairs and Inter-generational Solidarity, 554 Croatians with the most serious disabilities use services of personal assistants 80 hours a month.
A total of HRK 15.2 million was allocated for that purpose in 2010.
Croatian officials and the British Embassy in Zagreb also prepared a presentation of Paralympic sports. London will host the Paralympic Games in 2012.
British Ambassador David Blunt called for changing the way of thinking about disability.
There are 510,000 people with disabilities in Croatia, making up 11 percent of the total population, according to statistics kept by the Croatian Institute of Public Health.
Worldwide there are 700 million people with disabilities.