UNIMED Ondo Inaugurates Medical Rehabilitation Faculty
In a bid to train rehabilitation experts and provide quality rehabilitative services, the University of Medical Sciences, (UNIMED) Ondo State, on Monday inaugurated the new faculty of medical rehabilitation.
The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Adesegun Fatusi, informed of the scarcity of medical rehabilitation personnel in Nigeria, resulting to increase in the need for medical rehabilitative services.
Fatusi disclosed that the institution had introduced steps to commence degree programmes in four new areas. This was in addition to the current programme in physiotherapy, which included occupational therapy, prosthetics and orthotics, speech therapy and audiology.
In his words, “Medical rehabilitation is an important health field with a unique contribution to health and wellbeing. And embraces the disciplines that focus on both basic and applied aspects of health sciences, services, education, social and engineering as they relate to restoring human functional capacity and improving a person’s interaction with the surrounding environment.”
“The Nigeria picture is a classic one of low availability of personnel in the face of increasing needs for rehabilitation experts. And our higher education system has shown a poor inclination towards addressing the situation.”
Fatusi also expressed concern over the very few public universities in Nigeria offering any form of medical rehabilitation courses.
The Registrar of the Medical Rehabilitation Therapists Board of Nigeria, Dr Akanle Olufunke, decried the shortage of medical rehabilitation professionals in the country. She, however, urged universities and colleges of medicine across the country to consider the training of physiotherapy and medical rehabilitation professionals.
“Considering the increasing population of our country running to 200 million, less than 6000 registered medical rehabilitation professionals cannot meet the increasing rehabilitation needs of our nation,” she expressed.
