Date: Friday 31st of October, 2008
Time: 8 – 9am
Presenter: Mr. Marcel Pool – VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) Volunteer, Physiotherapy department
Topic: Community Based Rehabilitation – A New Challenge For The Physiotherapy Department.
Venue: Jessie Griffiths Hall (Hospital Mess)

Summary:

VSO Volunteer Marcel Pool has been working at the Goroka General Hospital for the last 2 years. As the Officer In Charge (OIC) of the Physiotherapy Department he has worked on capacity building for National Physiotherapist and Physio-technicians. The department is fully operational now and the nationals are very capable of providing quality services to the people of the Eastern Highlands Province (EHP). Per 1 January 2009 Mr. Bill Iyape, one of the National Physiotherapist who finished his study at the DWU in March 2008, will be taking of the OIC position of the Physiotherapy Dept.

VSO stand for Voluntary Services Overseas and Marcel is working for the Disability Program of VSO PNG. This Program has the following main objectives:

1. To enable disabled people to access appropriate hospital and Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) services.
2. To promote disability as a rights-based mainstream development issue amongst VSO volunteers, partner organizations and communities.

As part of the first objective, Marcel has just extended his contract with VSO and the hospital to work as a CBR coordinator. To do this work he will be working with the CBR Unit of Mt.Sion Institute for Disabled Persons. CBR is a concept that aims to provide services for people with disabilities in their communities. It is based on a rights-based approach, which means that people with disabilities have the same rights as others to be included in their society. CBR will just work if a collaboration of organizations from National, Provincial and Local level support CBR to empower people with disabilities in the community, and the community itself, to create an inclusive barrier-free society.

During his presentation Marcel explained what CBR stands for and how he and the Physiotherapy Dept. want to take up the challenge to improve CBR services in the EHP. One of the priorities will be to set up a management system to support CBR-volunteers. They will be key-persons to make CBR work in the rural areas of this province. Support from Provincial Level Government and other NGO’s will be needed to develop this management system.