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Essential to invest in care for disabled people: Chinese official

Xinhua, May 25, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Vice Chairman of the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDFP) Jia Yong stressed Tuesday that holistic care for people living with disabilities is essential in light of current health imperatives.

Addressing the 69th World Health Assembly, Jia said: "Taking care of disabled people is one of the important issues to implement in China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020)."

Highlighting that China had established an extensive network of products and services to benefit millions of disabled people, Jia indicated that such a strategy is vital to ensure that disabled individuals enjoy the same rights as everybody else.

In light of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the international community last year, CDFP's deputy-head called for all of the World Health Organization's (WHO) 194 member states to fully support the organization's "Global Assistive Technology Cooperation Program" (GATE).

He placed particular emphasis on the development of affordable, eco-friendly and smart assistive products to be used by this vulnerable group, whose access to assistive technologies must be improved in view of demographic trends.

"Access to quality assistive technologies very much respond to urgent and emerging challenges in today's world," said WHO's director of essential medicines and health products Suzanne Hill.

Longer life-expectancies in wealthy and middle-income countries mean that there is a growing number of hospitalizations.

As well as increasing specialized needs for patients, this puts pressure on both medical services and government health budgets.

"Assistive technologies should be seen as a really important advance and tool to help curb those growing expenses particularly in the hospital sector, by helping, for example, older people remain autonomous and functional and less dependent on health care," she added.

Hill warned that many disabled people are still prevented from playing an active role in society because of their inability to access support technologies enabling autonomy and functionality.

According to WHO estimates, out of the billion people in need of one or more assistive products today, only one in 10 have access to the necessary technology. Enditem