Where and how we work
Our main link at present is with rehabilitation services in Madagascar. We primarily work through focussed training visits by volunteers, who are highly trained professionals in different rehabilitation disciplines. A visiting team may consist of 2-3 clinicians. The training is interactive and practical, well planned and supplemented by on-line resources. We teach entirely to the expressed training and curriculum needs of our partners. Occasionally our Malagasy partners visit centres in other Low or Middle Income Countries, the UK or appropriate congresses. Our volunteers are carefully supported and trained and always find they get much out of these visits, which also benefits their work back in the UK. Our main costs are the training visits.
We liaise closely with our partners at every stage of the development of the programme and we may work with other INGOs in joint training. We will gladly share our expertise with others working in LMICs.
We have no paid staff and all funding goes directly to support our aims.
Our story
We have worked with our partners in Madagascar since 2008 when Anne met Dr Sonia Andrianabela. They both worked in Rehabilitation Medicine; Anne had a long experience of starting and building up rehabilitation services in Leeds, U.K. whilst Sonia was in the Ministry of Health with close connections with the Medical Faculty of the University of Antananarivo and knew the great need of her country for modern rehabilitation. Together Sonia and Anne devised a programme of training in Rehabilitation primarily for doctors but also for the multi-disciplinary teams working with them in Rehabilitation Centres across Madagascar. This ran from 2011-2013 involving an increasing number of UK rehabilitation professionals. It has been followed by focussed training visits since.
There are now several new services for children with clubfoot, and some input for those with cerebral palsy. There is a pioneering service in the capital, Antananarivo, for those with spinal cord injury needing rehabilitation. Most important, those whom we taught immediately set up the Association of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of Madagascar (AMPR Mada) which has held training congresses in 2014, 2016 and 2018.
The programme from 2011 onwards is described in the Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine (2015, see publications) and was evaluated as highly effective, giving great value for money. It transformed the rehabilitation landscape of Madagascar.
Those who were highly involved in delivering this training have joined with others who have much relevant expertise to form Global Rehabilitation as there is a great deal more to do. Many parts of this enormous country do not have any rehabilitation provision at regional or local levels; there are only a handful of community teams to help those in remote places. Many more services are needed yet the numbers of skilled local rehabilitation professionals are very few.
Our help is again requested urgently and from 2020, Global Rehabilitation is repeating and updating this successful programme for a new cohort of clinicians. We work in close collaboration with our partners, the Ministry of Health, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Antananarivo and AMPR Madagascar.
