Completion of wheelchair knowledge sharing project

Motivation's Disability KaR funded project is now complete: it has included the design of a new three-wheel wheelchair to cope with harsh rural environments, and a hand-propelled tricycle that enables the user to travel greater distances independently. The requirements of children with more complex supportive seating needs have been researched, as well as the possibility of replicating the Tanzanian based Wheelchair Technologists Training Course in Central America.

A practical 'Wheelchair Service Guide for Low Income Countries' has been published as part of the project, and is being distributed across Africa and internationally.

Disability information

Source's CD-ROM 'The Disability Convention - Making it Work', is now available. See the resources page. It was launched at a meeting of the UN Convention and has been sent to DPOs and disability NGOs in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The redesigned Source website www.asksource.info went live in May 2005; new features include 'Add a resource', 'Support for resource centres', the 'Key topic' areas, and an improved search interface for the databases. The new design is fully accessible to disabled users and loads quickly for users with slow connections.

Key lists of essential resources on disability topics such as 'Mainstreaming and disability' have been also produced.

Health information systems

Baobab Health Partnership has now installed 57 touchscreen clinical workstations have now been installed in Kamuzu (Lilongwe) Central Hospital, Malawi, spanning a number of departments. The number of patients registered now exceeds 205,000. The renovation of the Information Systems building was completed in January 2005 and it is now fully functional.

The Ministry of Health sees the value of the Patient Management Information System (PMIS) as a tool for improving patient care while transparently collecting valuable data needed to support management and public health initiatives. Expansion of the PMIS to a hospital in Blantyre will start later in 2005.