Early childhood development (ECD) is a critical stage in children’s lives, influencing future development and social integration. ECD research among children with disability and developmental delay in low and middle‐income countries is limited but crucial to inform planning and delivery of inclusive services. This study is the first to examine the prevalence of disability and delay among children attending pre‐school centres in rural Malawi.
This study found disability and developmental delays are common among pre‐school children in Malawi. 100 of 935 (10·7%) children were identified as having a disability. 109 of 933 (11·7%) children were classified as having developmental delay.
© 2025 by Sightsavers, Inc., Business Address for all correspondence: One Boston Place, Suite 2600, Boston, MA 02108.
To make sure you have a great experience on our site, we’d like your consent to use cookies. These will collect anonymous statistics to personalise your experience.
You have the option to enable non-essential cookies, which will help us enhance your experience and improve our website.
These enable our site to work correctly, for example by storing page settings. You can disable these by changing your browser settings, but some parts of our website will not work as expected.
To improve our website, we’d like to collect anonymous data about how you use the site, such as which pages you read, the device you’re using, and whether your visit includes a donation. This is completely anonymous, and is never used to profile individual visitors.
To raise awareness about our work, we’d like to show you Sightsavers adverts as you browse the web. By accepting these cookies, our advertising partners may use anonymous information to show you our adverts on other websites you visit. If you do not enable advertising cookies, you will still see adverts on other websites, but they may be less relevant to you. For info, see the Google Ads privacy policy.