By Carwyn Hill | CEO Haiti Hospital Appeal
Our rehabilitation service continues to take in new patients with spinal injuries and stroke impairments. Outpatient rehabilitation care provides assessment, physiotherapy and exercise for children and adults. Sadly many of the patients are receiving remedial care for conditions that should have been corrected in the early years of their lives; for example Amable, a 10 year old girl who has clubbed feet, had learned to walk on her ankles and is now receiving some basic physiotherapy to help her and her mother strengthen her lower leg muscles.
Over the last few months the construction has been developing rapidly, our new purpose built rehabilitation centre is now completed providing the perfect setting for our rehab patients. It will provide a unique and life transforming service for the country, recently highlighted in a report about our work by Dr Fritz Moise, one of Haiti’s leading SCI specialists: ‘The opening of the HHA centre of SCI was without any doubt a turning point in the destiny of the northern population of the country, especially in the life of those suffering from disabilities such as SCI. The feedback is positive and the statistics show the growing numbers of consults and the waiting list for new admissions in the inpatient unit.’
In addition we have started to launch our mobile rehabilitation team that provides support to patients in their houses. The team connects discharged individuals with community leaders and groups so they can be fully integrated within their communities and access the support they require. The team can also reach some of the most vulnerable, housebound patients, ensuring everyone is offered the opportunities they deserve.
We are also developing sports therapy for the rehabilitation patients with the provision of basic equipment javelins, discus, shot puts and a sophisticated three-wheel hand cycle. These activities are highly motivational and provide both great physical and mental development elements to treatment at a relatively low cost.
In relation to this rehabilitation project, we have launched a campaign for Haiti, “The Dream”, to be able to send a team of athletes to the London 2012 Paralympic games (http://www.haitidream.org/). The campaign would allow Haiti, a country with the highest rate of disability in the Americas, to be represented for the first time at a world event, raising the awareness of the lack of facilities and opportunities for the disabled in that country. We formally registered four of patients for the Parapan American Games in Mexico this November (one of the qualifiers for London 2012) with the Haitian Paralympic Committee. We have welcomed onto the HHA team a full time voluntary disability sports coordinator who’s going to be helping out with all this side of the work! This isn’t a one off campaign! We want it to leave a lasting legacy to provide the platform for future Haitian Paralympians to develop.
If you'd like to continue supporting this urgent work, please contact us today or make a donation via GlobalGiving. It's only thanks to you that such positive change is being made! Thanks again, and please keep up the great support.
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