‘One size fits all’ health policies crippling rural rehab - therapists

Abstract

Scarce rehabilitation services in rural areas, driven by a skeletal cadre of resolute therapists, are being undermined by ‘one size fits all’ policies that starve their departments of staff, budgets and vehicles, therefore shortening patients’ lives and reducing their chances of any lasting quality of life.
An Izindaba survey of occupational therapists (OTs), speech therapists (STs) and physiotherapists (PTs), in the deep rural provinces of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Mpumalanga, indicates that team work, innovation, voluntary unpaid overtime and use of their own vehicles to treat patients seem to come standard with the job.