Monday, May 13, 2013

Accessibility guideline imposes government of Nepal for defining the physiotherapist quotas at least at the district level



Salute to the right holders, state and non-state actors, who have actually played a very dominant role to roll out  the Government of Nepal(GON) validated accessibility guideline. This should be considered as one of the big initiative to include person with disability in developmental process. One should also realize this achievement as the assurance by state parties towards the equalization of rights, benefits and opportunities of the people with disability.

 No doubt, infrastructure can be certainly made maximum accessible during the re-innovation and reconstruction phase which takes place routinely for physical infrastructure on public places. The chief public places where people with disability often need to attend for their basic rights like health, education , employment should be completely accessible right from the beginning.  Inaccessible environment on these places makes the person deprived on attaining basic human rights. Deprivation from  basic rights tarnishes an idea of the including the people with disability as the potential contributor of the developing Nepal. Therefore, from million angles, the decision of making the public places an accessible place sounds perfect. On other hand, implementation of this guideline from GON obligates state parties and non-state parties to assure the things as directed on this guideline.


Now the government of Nepal has already finalized guideline. The next big challenge behind is the real implementation. I see two major parts on the implementation, one is reconstruction and another is making old inaccessible infrastructures into accessible one. Seems there is a need of huge financial resources on both to be constructed and to be reconstructed/re-innovated infrastructure,  to make them accessible as per the definition in guideline. Now, begins the countdown of crucial time for state and non-state actors to plan and implement directions incited by guideline through appropriate and vigilant utilization of the resources.

Making  infrastructure accessible requires qualified human resources around the country. One may just think that government of Nepal has enough engineers to make those things done at central and districts level. Yes, of course, it's the engineers who have lots to with the constructions. But if we see from another angle, disability is sector where the other technical human resources like physical therapists have to do a lot. Physical therapist assess and manage to improve the functional activity of person with any disability who have complains on performing the independent activity of daily livings and ambulation. This may also include the prescription of assistive and other orthopedic devices. Hence, physiotherapists are one of the major goal owners’ who facilitate the physical rehabilitation of the person with disability to make them independent enough for the activity of daily living.

Accessibility is also one of the area where there is the vital role of physical therapist. It’s very important to involve physical therapist while making the infrastructure accessible as physiotherapist has a lot to do for  mobility of the person with disability. After the finalization of accessibility guideline, indirect obligations `to the GON of Nepal to allocate physiotherapist quotas (at least at each district level) is imposed. But  it will not come into main agendas/ action plans until and unless this hidden imposition is highlighted by Nepalese physiotherapist themselves. 


No comments:

Post a Comment