adminNearly 700 seriously injured workers from all over Zimbabwe went through rehabilitation programmes last year at the Worker’s Compensation Rehabilitation Centre in Bulawayo. Of the 685 injured workers admitted to the centre, 209 were outpatients, meaning that they probably live in Bulawayo, while the other 476 were in-patients, mostly from other towns and cities.
The centre, which is situated next to Mpilo Hospital, is the only such centre for injured workers in the country It can take up to 200 patients at any one time, although it can only accommodate 80 as residents.
Statistics such as this, while important, seldom bring home sufficiently the tragic impact that a workplace accident can have on individual workers and their families.
At the end of November NSSA held, as it has done in other years, a Christmas party at the centre for those being rehabilitated at the centre, who were joined for the occasion by a number of other people who had completed their rehabilitation programmes.
A good number were paraplegics, who move around the centre in wheelchairs. Others had lost limbs, such as arms or legs. Some had lost fingers. Others had other disabilities as a result of accidents at work.
All had previously been able-bodied workers. In the moments it took for an accident to occur their lives were changed forever.
The Bulawayo rehabilitation centre is well equipped to take care of the rehabilitation needs of injured workers. The services offered there include medical services, counselling, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, social work and vocational training.
The centre’s hydrotherapy pool is believed to be the only working hydrotherapy pool in the country. The water is warm and maintained at the ideal temperature for hydrotherapy, a form of therapy that takes advantage of the greater freedom one has to exercise by moving one’s limbs underwater and the beneficial effect that warm water has on the body.
It has an electrotherapy unit, where various types of electrotherapy are used, depending on the physiotherapy needs of the individual. There is a well-equipped gym at the centre as well.
The occupational therapy department encourages use of limbs through different activities. This enables rehabilitees to focus on the activities rather than on their pain. The activities are chosen to suit each individual’s needs. Some of them achieve more than one objective. They may strengthen the back, for instance, at the same time as they are exercising arms or fingers.
In this department some learn to cook or to sew with one hand. Others learn how to transfer from a wheelchair to a toilet seat. The emphasis is on using activities to exercise, using what limbs one has to maximum advantage and learning how to carry out day-to-day activities with the limitations imposed by the disabilities that the workplace accident has caused.
The centre provides rehabilitees with appropriate prosthetics and appliances, such as crutches, walking sticks and wheelchairs.
It arranges surgery for those who need it. So far this year the Worker’s Compensation Insurance Fund has paid for four hip replacements, two knee replacements, one cervical fusion and one spinal fusion. Two other hip replacements are due to be done.
The vocational training courses provided at the centre are tailoring, leather craft, welding, carpentry and gardening and poultry.
There is also an industrial clinic at the centre, where workers with minor injuries from workplace accidents in Bulawayo are attended to. The clinic also provides treatment and dressings for residents of the centre who need them.
The centre’s social worker plays an important role in counselling those who come to the centre for rehabilitation who may often feel depressed about their situation, which may have far reaching implications for their working and family lives.
He plays an important role too in helping the rehabilitee settle back into normal life, whether at his old workplace, with his family or in his rural home, where he may need a house built for him and a Blair toilet. Such resettlement efforts may also require ramps to be built, ground to be levelled and approaches to be made to community leaders and family members.
Prior to the Christmas party a journalist enquired of centre manager Amon Bhebhe and NSSA director of benefits, schemes, planning and research Henry Chikova what challenges the centre faced.
Among those mentioned by Mr Bhebhe were the increasing cost of medical services, the shortage of some prosthetics and appliances and the water problems in Bulawayo.
However, Dr Chikova mentioned a still greater challenge in terms of the overall rehabilitation of injured workers, which is the attitude of employers and family members towards those who have been injured at work.
He said most employers were unwilling to take back a rehabilitated injured worker either in the same job as before or in a lighter job. It was as if the worker, once injured, was no longer of any importance to such employers.
This meant that the injured worker had to be trained for some new job, which generally would be a job in which he could be self-employed.
In some other countries, he pointed out, the employer was penalised if he refused to take back a worker who had been injured or disabled at his workplace. He was charged a higher worker’s insurance premium.
Family members too were not always helpful. Often a wheelchair-bound husband was deserted by his wife.
The social worker at the centre spends a great deal of time visiting families, employers and community leaders, as well as arranging for suitable accommodation, ramps and adaptations, in order to ensure that the disabled worker settles smoothly into normal life, following the completion of his rehabilitation programme. He continues to visit the worker periodically after he leaves the centre.
Talking Social Security is published weekly by the National Social Security Authority as a public service. There is also a weekly radio programme, PaMhepo neNssa/Emoyeni le NSSA, discussing social security issues at 6.50 pm every Thursday on Radio Zimbabwe and every Friday on National FM. There is another social security programme on Star FM on Wednesdays at 5.30pm. Readers can e-mail issues they would like dealt with in this column to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> or text them to 0772-307913. Those with individual queries should contact their local NSSA office or telephone NSSA on (04) 706517-8 or 706523-5.
Online Reporter