For the benefit of patients, a community rehabilitation service system should be set up as early as possible, says a signed article in Beijing News. An excerpt follows:

It has been reported that patients in a neighbourhood of northern Beijing now can receive rehabilitation exercise services provided by a nearby medical service centre.

This is a move aimed at exploring a viable way for patients in the process of recovering to leave hospital and go back to their community or home to receive rehabilitation services.

The hospital has set up neighbourhood rehabilitation projects in nearby medical service centres for this purpose.

This is indeed a piece of inspiring news.

After undergoing medical treatment in hospital, patients returning home and receiving one-on-one recovery training prescribed by medical personnel in their community will not only ease the shortage of medical resources in hospitals, but also help lighten economic pressures.

Also, with a more comfortable atmosphere at home and delicate nursing from family members, it is easy for patients to recover from illness, either physical or psychological.

It is very common in many foreign nations that neighbourhood medical workers register the disabled and then offer suitable home services according to their body conditions. Experience shows that 70 to 80 per cent of stroke-sufferers can recover to almost normal conditions if timely and scientific rehabilitation exercises are done.

In recent years in China, the number of stroke and hemiplegia patients has been on the increase. However, household rehabilitation programmes in the country are almost non-existent. As a result, many patients lose the best time for recovery.

A practical community service provision system can allay the pain of patients.

(China Daily April 4, 2006)