Performance of community-based rehabilitation planning (CBR) in rural areas of Iran
Hossein Nahvinejad
Abstract
The situation of people with disabilities in the developing countries should be a matter of great concern. There are today close to 250 million severely and moderately disabled persons in these countries; the annual increase is 10 million. Countries acting to assist disabled people are motivated by a belief in equality and by the desire to limit the severity of disability and the hardship it imposes on individuals and families, as well as to limit the loss that occurs when a sector of the population is economically unproductive.
The community-based rehabilitation system has in a very short time been introduced into about 90 developing countries. Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) is characterized by the active role of people with disabilities, their families, and the community in the rehabilitation process.
At the national level, CBR seeks the involvement of the government in the leading managerial role. This concerns policy-making, planning, implementing, co-ordination and evaluating the CBR system.
In Iran responsible of giving rehabilitation services to disabled people is Welfare Organization which is an independent department of Ministry of Health & Medical Education. Rehabilitation in Iran began during the 1920s. CBR in Iran began after the WHO manuals ('Training in the community for people with disabilities') were translated and adopted to Islamic culture. Evidently the technologies described in the training packages appear to be adequate and the functional results of excellent quality.
Primary Health Care Network and it's personnel included PHC workers, Technicians, Physicians and experts are used in this method.
In this study rural areas will be considered. However it will now be necessary to re-structure the CBR service delivery into a proper multi level system.