‘1 in every 3 Seychellois needs rehabilitation services,’ statistics show |08 September 2022
Workshop delegates in a souvenir photograph
• Seychelles works on first-ever Rehabilitation Plan
Seychelles is presently working on its first-ever national rehabilitation strategic plan and monitoring and evaluation framework for the next five years.
This is through a three-day workshop that is taking place at the Backstage Seychelles restaurant in Roche Caiman.
The workshop, spearheaded by the Rehabilitation Unit of the Health Care Agency, is funded by the World Health Organisation and forms part of the organisation’s Rehabilitation 2030 initiative.
It is the follow-up to the first-ever country assessment in March this year to look at rehabilitation services in Seychelles.
Speaking to the local media, the country’s senior occupational therapist, Fiona Paulin, said rehabilitation services has been established for the past thirty years and the Ministry of Health has significant experience and relevant professional qualifications required to support priority reforms and programmes. The services is also included in the essential health care package, and is funded by the government.
However there are some gaps in the services which encompass physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and pathology, orthoptist prosthesis and audiology.
“There were areas that needed to be improved such as the amount of resources, rehabilitation is not fully integrated in the wider health sector police, we need to identify the objectives, the actions that we should be taking and what is the role of the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders,” explained Mrs Paulin.
Seychelles is being assisted by the WHO’s rehabilitation consultant, Dr Nassib Tawa, who also took part in the country assessment earlier this year.
Dr Tawa said Seychelles has made progress by having the rehabilitation services in place, however the country has been unable to make it accessible to all.
He said that with its ageing population and quite a number of children who are born with different malformations including cerebral palsy, as well as victims of injuries and trauma of road traffic accidents who require rehabilitative services and assistive products, the country needs to make this service accessible and affordable to all.
“Actually statistics show that one in every three people in Seychelles have a problem that would benefit from rehabilitation services or assistive services. However 50 percent or more of these people who require rehabilitation and assistive services do not have access to these, so the current rehab services available in the country only service a minority,” said Dr Tawa.
He added that this challenge is not unique to Seychelles but is befalling many countries in the African region and globally, where rehabilitation services have been left behind compared to other components of health care such as prevention, promotive health care, palliative health care, that are well-established.
Another issue is a lack of professionals for example the country has one prosthesis orthotist for the entire population.
“As for the other cadres the number are also very low compared to the need of the population and by being overstretched for sure you will have issues of low coverage, poor quality of care and this kind of care you will not deliver to the expected level,” added Dr Tawa.
It was for this reason that the WHO came up with the global ‘Rehabilitation 2030 initiative’.
“Through this global project the World Health Organisation is calling upon countries including Seychelles and the government to make deliberate actions and concerted efforts, and not just government but also stakeholders, the private sector, health sector development partners and even private individuals to make investments into rehabilitation,” added Dr Tawa.
Following the national assessment which was the first phase, the plan now moves into the second and third stages where participants from different sectors including health, education, social and sports will be drafting the national strategic plan as well as monitoring and evaluation tool.
“Basically we will now concretise the key findings of the study and finalise them and collectively come up with a national strategic plan into how best do we improve rehabilitation services in Seychelles,” said Dr Tawa.
The strategic plan will be for a five-year period and the participants will present their first draft tomorrow.
Photo credit: Pierette Confiance