Building Master programs in Rehabilitation in Kenya and Tanzania

ongoing

About 15% of the world's population have some form of disability, and functioning difficulties are increasing. In Africa, the double burden of communicable and chronic health conditions suggests that 1 in 5, or 210 million people need rehabilitation (WHO, 2019). This partnership aims at strengthening the rehabilitation workforce in East Africa by developing an educational digital ecosystem and innovative interdisciplinary master programs in rehabilitation that will secure the sustainable training of qualified physiotherapists, occupational therapists, prosthetists and orthotists, speech and language therapists, audiologists and optometrists in Tanzania, Kenya and beyond, as well as promote rehab services and research across sectors, thus responding to WHO’s Rehabilitation 2030 Call for Action and both countries’ Rehabilitation Strategies. Four universities, two in Tanzania and two in Kenya, will build their academic capacity while co-creating and co-piloting two context-sensitive MSc in Rehab curricula with profession-specific exits, student active learning, internships across public and private sectors, and participatory research. This will ensure the running and creation of new BSc programs and a more even rural-urban supply and distribution of rehab professionals reaching the most vulnerable. The programs will be the first blended MSc in Rehab in East Africa establishing educational-, services- and research hubs and networks across the region. A spin-off will be the production of digital continuing professional development courses and microcredits in rehab, digital rehab promotion material and tele-rehab networks. For the European partners, where higher education still is strongly biased towards western contexts with little competence in global and minority health, it will result in capacity building thanks co-produced material, international staff- and student exchange and co-supervision, and collaborative research, thus extending beyond the partner countries.