The 76th Assembly of the World Health Organization-WHO, dedicated to the promotion of health for all, is underway in Geneva from 21 to 30 May. On May 24, 2023, for the first time, the Assembly put a resolution on the topic of rehabilitation to the vote, entitled Strengthening Rehabilitation in Health Systems. The resolution had been approved in January 2023 and proposed to the Assembly for a vote. It is stated that the need for rehabilitation is increasing both due to the situation created by the Covid-19 epidemic and due to global demographic change, with the rapid aging of the population. Responding to the growing unmet need for rehabilitation by stepping up efforts to deliver quality rehabilitation interventions for everyone everywhere is therefore no longer an option, but a necessity.
Rehabilitation needs to date are largely unmet globally and in many countries over 50% of people do not receive the rehabilitation services they need, also because most countries “are not equipped enough to respond to the ‘sudden increase in rehabilitation needs created by health emergencies’. The Assembly therefore urges member states to “raise awareness and develop national commitment to rehabilitation, including for assistive technology, and to strengthen planning for rehabilitation, including its integration into health plans and policies”. national”. Hence the call to strengthen the funding mechanisms of rehabilitation services and the provision of technical assistance, with a person-centred strategy and intensively participatory rehabilitation services, as well as promoting high-quality rehabilitation research.
“With this resolution, the World Health Assembly has given a central role to physical and rehabilitation medicine, underlining that rehabilitation services are essential for the achievement of the UN Agenda 2023’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 “to ensure a healthy living and promoting well-being for all at all ages’”, explains the professor Stephen Negrini, professor of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine at the State University of Milan at the IRCCS Galeazzi S. Ambrogio Hospital and director of Cochrane Rehabilitation, an international association created for the purpose of collecting, critically evaluating and disseminating information relating to the efficacy and safety of health interventions, which in Italy is based in 4 structures, including the IRCSS “Don Gnocchi” in Milan. «It is an important step to raise awareness in all health systems that today rehabilitation is an essential service in universal health coverage, especially in the face of the progressive aging of the population. Only a fraction of the people in the world who need it today receive rehabilitation services, with serious consequences in terms of disability, suffering, induced poverty, but also an additional burden on health systems. All this weighs more in low-income countries, but also in Italy the rehabilitation needs (and not only chronicity, as they say) have dramatically increased”.
At Don Gnocchi, the researcher in particular is following the work of Cochrane Rehabilitation Clare Arienti: «For years we have collaborated to produce quality evidence in support of the work that the World Health Organization is doing to send the important message of how rehabilitation services must be constantly implemented in national health systems to improve functional recovery and reduce disability,” he comments.
Foto WHO, World Health Assembly