My Turn

Physiotherapy largely underutilised

 

Just call him Mr Mbewe. The man is only happy to share his story, not his name. He cannot speak clearly. He cannot walk. He barely uses his right hand. But he was not born like this.

He had worked as accountant for 20 years when he suffered a stroke which left him paralysed. The breadwinner of his family has become dependent.

Some blame the disability on failure to seek help on time, but the family members did take him to the best hospitals and physicians in the country.

But Mr Mbewe’s is one of many stories of how productive people sustain disabilities following accidents and or illnesses.

Stroke, for example, is the leading cause of long-term disability and the sixth cause of death in the country.

This is largely due to under-utilisation of medical professionals called physiotherapists.

So important is the profession that September 8 was set aside as the World Physiotherapy Day. This year, the country commemorated the day on September 17.

In this article, we shine the light on physiotherapy as a profession; what a physiotherapist does and how different sectors can utilise their service.

Physiotherapy entails restoring the body to its healthy state. It is a science-based profession and takes a ‘whole person’ approach to health and wellbeing.

This includes the patient’s general lifestyle.

It does not use drugs to achieve healing and at the core is the patients’ involvement in their own care, through education, awareness, empowerment and participation in their treatment.

It is a profession which helps manage chronic pains like backaches and sudden injuries.

It also manages long-term medical conditions such as asthma, heart failure and preparation for childbirth. Physiotherapists are vital in occupational health. They provide advice in ergonomics, prevent and treat work-related discomfort, muscle complications and skeletal pains.

For long, most patients in need of this service have been starved of its benefits due to absence of well-trained personnel. This notion is slowly becoming a story of yesterday as the University of Malawi’s College of Medicine is training competent physiotherapists and three cohorts have already graduated since its inception in 2011.

The future for physiotherapy is promising. A plea would be to policy makers in the discipline of health to mainstream physiotherapy at all levels, both in research and patient care.

Everyone would appreciate the invaluable work clinicians and doctors do in offering service to patients.

However, they can do better by embracing the growing physiotherapy profession, harnessing them in patients care and management.

The general population ought to realise that there is something physiotherapy can do for them: companies can benefit by minimising off-sick time for staff or time spent on seeking medical care.

Hospitals can also save time and resources as patients and clients receiving physiotherapy have short hospital-stay.

Athletes and sports institutions can gain from pre-sport screening for fitness, prevention of injury and sudden death.

It is high time physiotherapists made their presence felt in district hospitals instead of just existing in tertiary hospitals.

It does not respond to people’s needs having physiotherapists just in central hospitals.

With such a profession in its infancy, having the very few well-trained physiotherapists jobless makes no sense.

It is high time such workers, like all other medical professionals, got prioritised for national development. Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country could have to transform into a wealthy nation. n

 

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