Fundamentals of SCI care for Africa

A 3-day workshop in spinal cord injury management will be held in conjunction with the Annual Scientific Meeting. Delegates to the Course will be invited to the first day of the Annual Scientific Meeting to provide them with exposure to the leading experts and current best practice, while the Course will run for 3 days from the second day of the Annual Scientific Meeting. The course will be run as a series of workshops in partnership with the WHO-DART team and the South African Department of Health. The emphasis will be on applying best scientific practice in varying contexts and environments.

Scope of education workshop

Management and rehabilitation of spinal cord injury is a lifelong process that takes place along a continuum of care. Health care workers in the field should be involved in prevention activities wherever possible. They should be present to resuscitate the newly injured, establish physiological stability, train the patient/client and her family to maintain this physiological stability in their home and then establish residential re-integration. The health worker must be prepared to move out of the hospital into the community and the workplace to empower individuals and communities to take care of themselves and of the spinal cord injured who live in them.

The workshop will be based in the community and outcome based model of rehabilitation, while recognizing that spinal cord injury does present as a life threatening injury that frequently requires hospital care.

The International Classification of Function Disability and Health (ICF), developed and published by WHO, provides a common language and classification of the factors encountered in SCI – including impairments of body function and structure, environmental facilitators and barriers, personal factors and limitations of activity and restrictions of participation. It provides a framework for assessing patients/clients and populations, for planning interventions and for monitoring outcomes.

The workshops will lean on this biopsychosocial model of human functioning.

Target Audience

The aim of the Course will be to train the health care workers from the developing world in general, and Africa in particular, in the basic principles of spinal cord injury management.

Teams from centers in Africa and from other countries in the developing world are being invited to participate in the course.

Handouts / Educational material

Handouts / Educational material will be provided to all delegates who will then be encouraged to disseminate knowledge and material of SCI management in their home region/country in their role as trainers.