The International Rehabilitation Forum (IRF), an academic consortium designed to provide medical rehabilitation in rural and low-resource regions of the world, is slated to hold its second world conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh, December 1 through 5. A recent IRF news release notes that the conference’s theme will be to “Strengthen PM&R in Low-Resource and Developing Regions.” The event aims to bring together rehab doctors and allied health professionals from around the world to share their work and ideas about providing rehabilitation services to rural and low-resource regions.

Potential attendees will have the opportunity to participate in the conference by sharing professional experiences through presentations and work groups. Programs provided to attendees are scheduled to include rehabilitation at developing areas as it relates to common practices and possibilities, MSK, burn/trauma, athletes and disabled athletes, cerebral palsy and BSMMU autistic baby project.

Abstract submissions for the event are also being accepted. The release notes that papers, posters, and presentations by experts working in rural and low-resource regions or about medical rehabilitation in these regions will be considered for presentation. Publication in the meeting proceedings will also be considered.

IRF leader Andrew J. Haig, MD, professor, physical medicine and rehabilitation, University of Michigan, emphasizes that the conference bucks scientific convention by encouraging attendees not only to share research but to break off into groups in order to actively solve problems. Haig spotlights a previous conference in Turkey in which a work group met to discuss rehabilitation during natural disasters, which ultimately helped, organize responses to the Hati earthquake.

Haig adds that the meeting in Dhaka,“…especially calls expatriates and their colleagues back home to attend and solve problems together. We are also very excited about the group writing the first textbook of medical rehabilitation for low-resource countries.  Finally, we’re going to have experts in media relations help our attendees understand how they can and should use local media to get support for their own mission.”

For more information and to register for the event, click here.

Source: IRF