A recent assessment by the Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped organization shows that most of the district health centers and hospitals in Dong Nai province have limited capacity for rehabilitation services, and those offering services are limited to basic physical therapy with no capacity for occupational and speech therapies. Hence, persons with disabilities (PWDs) have to travel long distances to provincial hospitals to access these services. To improve this situation, in May 2020, USAID’s Disabilities Rights Enforcement, Coordination and Therapies (DIRECT) project provided equipment to four district hospital rehabilitation units and set up a therapy room for children with intellectual disabilities at a provincial center for Agent Orange victims in Dong Nai province.
Furthermore, the project helped the local health system to improve its human resources for rehabilitation by providing training and technical assistance to existing and new practitioners. Twenty-eight local rehabilitation staff were trained to use advanced clinical techniques in assessing and planning rehabilitation services. USAID also provided training to 192 community health workers in Dong Nai on how to manage a cloud-based disability/rehabilitation information system to effectively collect, update, and utilize disabilities and rehabilitation data. The system was developed by USAID, adopted by the Ministry of Health for nationwide application, and is currently being implemented in over 34 provinces in Vietnam.
So What? By providing rehabilitation equipment and technical assistance, and developing enhanced data management approaches, USAID is improving PWDs’ access to services in rural districts.
