Rehabilitation

Key facts

Rehabilitation is an essential component of universal health coverage, along with promoting good health, preventing disease and providing treatment and palliative care.
Rehabilitation helps the child, adult or elderly person to enjoy the greatest possible independence in practicing his daily activities, and enables him to participate in the areas of education, work, leisure, and to perform useful roles in life, such as caring for the family.
It is estimated that there are 2.4 billion people in the world currently living with a health condition that would benefit from rehabilitation.
The need for rehabilitation is expected to increase worldwide due to changes in population health and characteristics, such as individuals living longer lives, albeit with more chronic diseases and disabilities.
Rehabilitation service needs currently remain largely unmet, and more than 50% of individuals in some low- and middle-income countries lack the rehabilitation services they need. Emergencies, including conflicts, disasters and outbreaks, create dramatic increases in rehabilitation needs and, at the same time, disrupt rehabilitation services.
Rehabilitation is an important part of universal health coverage, and is an essential strategy for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3, “Ensure healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages.”

Overview

Rehabilitation is defined as “a set of interventions designed for the purpose of improving functioning and reducing disability in individuals with health conditions in their interaction with their environment.”

Simply put, rehabilitation helps the child, adult or elderly person to enjoy the greatest possible independence in carrying out his daily activities, and enables him to participate in education, work, leisure and to perform useful roles in life, such as caring for the family. Rehabilitation achieves this by working with the person and their family to treat underlying health conditions and their symptoms, modifying their environment to better suit their needs, using assistive products, educating to promote self-management, and adapting tasks so they can be performed more safely and independently. Together, these strategies can help the individual overcome the difficulties he faces in thinking, seeing, hearing, communicating, eating, or moving around.

Every person may need rehabilitation at some point in their life after suffering an injury, undergoing surgery, suffering from an illness or illness, or due to a lack of functional performance as a result of aging.

Here are some examples of rehabilitation:

Pronunciation and vocabulary training to improve a person's ability to communicate following a brain injury;
Exercise training to increase muscle strength and improve voluntary movements and balance in people with stroke or Parkinson's disease;
Modifying an elderly person's residential environment to enhance their safety and independence at home and reduce their risk of falling;
Educating people with heart disease about how to exercise safely;
Preparing people who have had a leg amputation to be able to use a prosthetic limb and to make, fit and re-fit the prosthesis;
Utilizing immobilization and splinting techniques to help skin heal, reduce swelling, and restore mobility following burn surgery;
Prescribing medication for children with cerebral palsy to reduce spasticity;
Providing psychological treatments for people suffering from emotional distress following a spinal cord injury;
Providing social skills training for people with schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, or intellectual disability disorders;
Training people with vision loss to use a white cane;
Working with patients in intensive care units to improve their ability to breathe, prevent complications, and speed up their recovery after they become seriously ill.

Rehabilitation is very person-centred, meaning that the interventions chosen for each individual target their goals and preferences. Rehabilitation services can be provided in many different settings, such as inpatient or outpatient hospitals, outpatient physical or occupational therapy clinics, and community facilities such as an individual's home, school or workplace.

The rehabilitation workforce consists of a variety of health professionals, including but not limited to physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, audiologists, orthotists and prosthetists, clinical psychologists and physicians specializing in physiatry. Rehabilitation, and nursing staff working in rehabilitation. Many other health workers, such as general practitioners, surgeons and community health workers, may play an important role in rehabilitating people.

Benefits of rehabilitation

Rehabilitation can reduce the impact of a wide range of health conditions, including diseases (acute or chronic), illnesses or injuries, and it complements other health interventions, such as medical and surgical interventions, to help facilitate recovery and achieve the best possible outcomes. In addition, rehabilitation can help prevent, reduce or manage complications resulting from many health conditions, such as in the context of spinal cord injury, stroke or fracture.

Rehabilitation helps minimize or slow the disabling effects of chronic health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes, by providing people with these conditions with self-management strategies, assistive products, pain management, or Other complications. As such, rehabilitation contributes to healthy aging.

Rehabilitation is an investment that brings cost benefits to both individuals and society, and can help avoid the high costs of hospitalization, reduce the length of stay, and prevent re-admissions. Because rehabilitation also enables individuals to engage in or return to work and employment, or maintain independence at home, it minimizes the need for financial or carer support.

Rehabilitation is an important part of universal health coverage, and is an essential strategy for achieving the third goal of the Sustainable Development Goals, “Ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages.”

Misconceptions about rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is not limited to people with long-term physical disabilities or impairments, but rather is an essential health service provided to anyone with an acute or chronic health condition, impairment or injury that limits their ability to function, and should therefore be available to everyone who needs it.

Rehabilitation is neither a recreational health service available only to those who can afford it, nor an optional service that is only attempted when other interventions implemented fail to prevent or treat a health condition.

Rather, timely, high-quality and affordable rehabilitation interventions should be available to all in order to achieve their full social, economic and health benefits, which in many cases means starting rehabilitation services as soon as a health condition is noticed and continuing to provide rehabilitation services alongside Other health interventions.

Unmet rehabilitation needs globally

About 2.4 billion people in the world currently live with a health condition that would benefit from rehabilitation. It is estimated that this need for rehabilitation services will increase further in the coming years in light of changes in the health and characteristics of populations around the world. People are now living longer, and the number of people over the age of sixty is expected to double by 2050, and the number of people living with chronic diseases such as diabetes, stroke and cancer will increase. At the same time, exposure to injuries and health conditions that impair a child's development (such as cerebral palsy) continues, which can affect an individual's functioning and cause increased rates of disability that could benefit from rehabilitation services.

Needs for rehabilitation services remain largely unmet in many parts of the world, with more than half of people in low- and middle-income countries without access to these services.

The world's needs for rehabilitation services remain unmet due to many factors, including the following:

Failure to prioritize rehabilitation and allocate funding, policies and plans to it at the national level;
Lack of available rehabilitation services outside urban areas, and long waiting periods;
The high costs that the individual spends from his own pocket and the lack or inadequacy of means of financing.
Shortage of trained rehabilitation professionals, with fewer than 10 experienced practitioners per million population in many low- and middle-income settings;
Lack of resources, including assistive technologies, equipment and consumables;
The need for more research and data on rehabilitation;
Ineffective referral pathways to rehabilitation services and low level of utilization.

Emergency rehabilitation

Natural hazards such as earthquakes or disease outbreaks and man-made hazards, including conflicts, acts of terrorism or industrial accidents, can generate huge needs for rehabilitation services resulting from injury or impairment. It also disrupts existing services and has its greatest impacts on the most vulnerable populations and health systems.

Although the important role of emergency rehabilitation is recognized in clinical and humanitarian guidelines, it is rarely seen as part of the health system's emergency preparedness and early response, resulting in increased pre-existing limitations on rehabilitation services and less efficient service delivery. health and exposes directly affected people to increased risk of vulnerability and disability.