Disability Care Services

GLRA India supported hospitals and Mobile Service Delivery Teams provide quality services on Prevention of Impairments and Disabilities (POID) to all the needy patients.

GLRA India supported NGOs intensified POID services and prepared a Special Action Plan in order to prevent, limit and correct deformities at field level by adopting various simple techniques and aids and appliances. The patients with various complications are being referred to the nearest hospitals for specialized care/treatment. The other main services under disability programme are supply of MCR (Micro Cellular Rubber) protective footwear for patients having ulcers and insensitive feet, supply of self care / ulcer care kits and reconstructive surgery.

Disability Care Service

The POID services rendered during the year 2004 are given below.

PREVENTION OF IMPAIRMENTS & DISABILITIES (POID) SERVICES

SELF CARE TRAINING

For successful disability prevention the self care training and monitoring are two important components in POID programme. GLRA India intensified self-care training to the individuals, groups of patients and their family members. It is observed that many patients can solve some of their problems on their own by regular practice of self-care skills.

It is also known fact that certain patients develop new complications if they do not practice self-care properly. In many occasions the trained Physio-technicians / Health worker used to identify and help the patients to correct their wrong practices. It is gratifying to note that 13,754 disability patients were evaluated on the result of self-care education in different regions of GLRA India.

The following table reveals the importance of self-care education. It is encouraging to note that about 92% of the disability patients remained static or improved and only 8% of the patients developed either new disabilities or worsening of existing disabilities where the attention of monitoring by health worker is needed to help the patients.

RESULTS OF SELF CARE EDUCATION

TRAINING ON SWIFT DISABILITY ASSESSMENT

As per the available records and statistics there are 19,322 disability patients existing in 60 GLRA India supported projects. It was pointed out that the number of disability patients reported by the projects in general is on the lower side. Hence it was emphasized the need of special campaign to carry out quality assessment on disability as a fast pace, so that the reliable picture of disability will be available from the projects / PHCs / Districts. Keeping this fact in view, GLRA India planned to organize SWIFT Disability Assessment Training for Physiotechnicians, Non Medical Supervisors and Para Medical Staff who are responsible for POID activities in the projects.

During the year 2004, 4 SWIFT disability training programmes were organized at regional level to speed up the quality assessment in the project.

List of participants attended the SWIFT disability assessment training during the year 2004, is given below :