Identifying people in need of rehabilitation in rural Zimbabwe

The Ministry of Health of Zimbabwe has initiated eight Community-based Rehabilitation projects in rural areas. Within each project, a survey was undertaken to identify people with a disability who could benefit from these projects. This article discusses the set-up, outcome and shortcomings of the surveys. The results of the surveys are compared with previous studies on people in need of rehabilitation in Zimbabwe. The surveys led to three major findings: 1. The majority of the people in need of rehabilitation in the rural areas have not been in contact with rehabilitation services before; 2. The results of the surveys differ from previous studies in terms of the numbers of clients in the different diagnostic categories; 3. Community-based rehabilitation deals with a different group of clients compared with hospital-based Rehabilitation. The use of the ICIDH is recommended to standardise future surveys. Implications for the development of rehabilitation services are discussed in the article.