Telerehabilitation
A Global Challenges Research Network
About us
The number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, with neurological conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury is increasing. Rehabilitation is critical for people with neurological conditions to ensure good health outcomes and quality of life. However, people with neurological conditions in Ghana, and other similar countries, are often unable to access rehabilitation services due to the lack of staff, high costs of services and/or because they live in rural areas a distance from the specialist centres.
The improvement in telecommunication networks and the rising number of people in Ghana with mobile phones (about 75%) and smart phones (about 35%) suggests that telerehabilitation (the remote delivery of rehabilitation services) has the potential to be a low cost solution, and beneficial for people with neurological conditions. Although the evidence is limited especially in lower income countries.
Remote rehabilitation in Ghana
Hear from Professor Fred Stephen Sarfo and Senior Occupational Therapist Derrick Antwi on the collaboration between GCU and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
Our Vision
- To provide a forum for researchers spanning health care, policy and practice, information technology together with service users/carers and other key stakeholders to develop research priorities for telerehabilitation for people with neurological conditions in Ghana.
- To develop and undertake a programme of sustainable, innovative, interdisciplinary research based on the identified research priorities to improve the welfare of people with neurological conditions in Ghana and their carers.
- To improve the research capacity and capability of rehabilitation staff in Ghana.
- To support the implementation of an evidence based, scalable and sustainable telerehabilitation service for people with neurological conditions in Ghana.
- To explore the generalisability of the findings in Ghana to other SSA countries.
