On the morning of Oct. 9, the “Hope House” for patients’ spinal cord injury in Yichang was established in Yichang Municipal Rehabilitation Hospital (Rehabilitation Branch of the First Hospital of Yichang). The first group of 12 people with spinal cord injury was officially admitted to the hospital and started 21 days of free rehabilitation training to maximize the improvement of self-care ability, outdoor travel ability and social adaptability.

　　According to Zhang Zaiyin, secretary and director of the Party Committee of the Yichang Municipal Disabled Persons’ Federation, there are 81,000 handicapped people in our city, many of whom are patients with spinal cord injury. With the rapid development of society, there are more and more spinal cord injury and lifelong disability caused by road traffic accidents, high-altitude falling, and latent spinal cord diseases. Without basic rehabilitation knowledge, Patients can hardly recover from the psychological and real life after injury. The establishment of “Hope House” will help these people with spinal cord injury to strive to become stronger and support themselves, so that more injured people can return to the “house” of society from the hospital bed through appropriate rehabilitation services and targeted rehabilitation training, so as to improve the quality of life.

　　Huang Xiaoqun, director of the Yichang Municipal Rehabilitation Hospital, said that as a designated hospital of the “Hope House”, the hospital would organize experts to conduct accurate rehabilitation assessment for patients with spinal cord injury and formulate training content according to the main dysfunctional and personalized characteristics. “Each period of rehabilitation training lasts 21 for days. The training mainly includes activities of daily living training, urination and defecation control training, walking training or walking training under the assistance of orthotic device.”

　　Besides physical rehabilitation, the “Hope House” plays a more important role in mental rehabilitation. “We will conduct targeted life reconstruction training for each student’s characteristics. The medical staff with strong sense of caring for the disabled and working ability will be selected to form an expert guidance group to provide psychological counseling, patient’s condition counseling, and rehabilitation training guidance services for spinal cord injury. Then, they will carry out active and effective treatment according to individual conditions with related activities record. In addition, the situation of rehabilitation training will be evaluated comprehensively.” Huang Xiaoqun said.

　　According to Yang Zhuowen, the chairman of the Yichang Association of Persons with Physical Disability, the “Hope House” for spinal cord injury, funded by the Yichang Municipal Disabled People’s Federation, is jointly sponsored by Yichang Municipal Disabled Rehabilitation Center and Yichang Municipal Rehabilitation Hospital. People with spinal cord injury can receive rehabilitation training free of charge. And those who are willing to sign up for rehabilitation training can register at the county-level Disabled Persons’ Federation in their home towns. The members of the daily work management committee of “Hope house” will cooperate with the experts of the rehabilitation hospital to conduct a visit at candidates’ house. And finally they will determine the list of eligible applicants. (Journalist Liu JIngjing, Xiao Min, Correspondent Xiang Ximing, Yuan Cheng)