Challenges to Rehabilitation Services in Sub-Saharan Africa From a User, Health System, and Service Provider Perspective: Scoping Review

Background:
Rehabilitation aims to restore and optimize the functioning of impaired systems for people with disabilities. It is an integral part of universal health coverage, and access to it is a human right.

Objective:
We aimed to identify the key challenges to rehabilitation services in Sub-Saharan Africa from a user, health system, and service provider perspective.

Methods:
This scoping review was conducted in accordance with the 5-stage framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley. A comprehensive electronic search was run to identify published articles on rehabilitation services in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 131 articles retrieved, 83 articles were assessed for eligibility and 15 papers that met the inclusion criteria were considered.

Results:
The results show that people with disabilities in Sub-Saharan Africa face multifactorial challenges to access rehabilitation services. Poor access to rehabilitation services is associated with less attention given to rehabilitation by governments, which leads to less funding, negative cultural and social beliefs, fewer rehabilitation centers, poorly equipped rehabilitation units, failure of health systems, lack of training to rehabilitation practitioners, and logistical and financial constraints. This review also reveals that digital rehabilitation reduces costs and improves access to services in hard-to-reach geographical areas. However, digital rehabilitation faces challenges as well, including connectivity issues, inaccessibility to technology, a lack of technical knowledge, a lack of privacy, and ethical concerns.

Conclusions:
People with disabilities face multifactorial challenges to access rehabilitation services in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is therefore critical to address these challenges to optimize patients’ health outcomes and offer better rehabilitation services.