The University of Medical Sciences, Ondo State, on Monday inaugurated the new faculty of medical rehabilitation in a bid to train rehabilitation experts and provide quality rehabilitative services.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Adesegun Fatusi, said there was scarcity of medical rehabilitation personnel in Nigeria, noting that the need for medical rehabilitative services was on the increase.

The Vice-Chancellor said the institution had initiated steps to commence degree programmes in four new areas in addition to the current programme in physiotherapy, which included occupational therapy, prosthetics and orthotics, speech therapy and audiology.

He said, “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.”

He also lamented that 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, who decried the shortage of medical rehabilitation professionals in the country, called on 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 said.

https://punchng.com/unimed-inaugurates-medical-rehabilitation-faculty/