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Nationwide drive launched to aid disabled

By Cao Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-06 13:31

SHANGHAI: China has initiated a two-year campaign to train professional workers who could help improve the lot of the country's 83 million disabled people.

A trainer (left) teaches blind people to use computers at a rehabilitation center in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. [China Daily]

From October to the end of 2011, experts on disabled rehabilitation will tour the country training professionals and executives in rehabilitation institutions, both government- and privately-owned, the China Disabled Persons' Federation said Monday.

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According to the federation, the courses will focus on rehabilitation skills and the management of rehabilitation centers.

"First, one course will be taught in each province and then the federation will organize further training if any province requests more," it said in a statement Monday.

By 2008, China had nearly 83 million disabled people but fewer than 30 percent of them had received rehabilitation services.

According to a government plan announced in 2004, every disabled person in the country will have access to rehabilitation services by 2015. And in last month, the government announced it would train 100,000 community-based rehabilitation professionals.

Provincial and municipal government will cover the costs of the plan, with the central government plowing an additional 1 million yuan ($147,000) into these efforts in underdeveloped central and western regions of the country.

"It will be a great benefit for people like me," said Xu Mingzhen, 62, a deaf woman from Shanghai. She said she had never previously participated in a rehabilitation program.

"My life could have been different if such services had been offered when I was young," she said.

Statistics from the federation showed that 5.56 million disabled people in China were rehabilitated to some extent last year thanks to government-funded programs.

As a result of these programs, 800,000 people received cataract operations, with 251,000 being provided free of charge. Meanwhile, 35,000 people with poor vision were equipped with visual aids, Xinhua News Agency reported.

In addition, more than 20,000 deaf children were given language development training, 3,000 physically disabled children from poor families received corrective surgery, nearly 100,000 physically disabled people received rehabilitation trainings, and 27,000 children with learning difficulties aged up to 14 were also given rehabilitation.

More than 5,000 professionals serving the disabled received training in 2008, Xinhua reported.