Poverty remains a major obstacle facing a national goal to provide rehabilitation services to all of the country's disabled by 2015, the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF) has said.
"Ongoing rehabilitation work can hardly meet the demand for it," said Shen Zhifei, CDPF's deputy general director in an online interview earlier this month.
There are about 83 million disabled in the country, making up about 6.34 percent of the total population, official figures have showed.
The State Council in 2002 set a goal to provide rehabilitation services for all of the disabled by 2015.
About 13.3 million disabled people have received rehabilitation services, Shen said.
Referring to a 2006 CDPF survey, Shen said about 28 percent of those polled said they needed treatment and rehabilitation services, but "only 8.45 percent have actually received them".
This was because about 75 percent of the disabled people live in the countryside, usually economically underdeveloped areas, Shen said.
Another 2006 survey, conducted in Beijing, Sichuan and Henan, showed that about 33 percent of the handicapped and 61 percent of those with mental illnesses needed rehabilitation but could not afford the cost, Shen said.
Similarly, 43 percent of those with hearing disabilities could not afford hearing aids, Shen said.
Up to 20 million Chinese are suffering from hearing loss, the China hearing aid website stated.
Still, only 3 percent of the world's 7 million audiphones are reportedly sold to the China market.
"That's why we need to increase funds for rehabilitation," Shen said.
To that effect, the CDPF formed a special lottery to boost funding for the rehabilitation of the disabled last year, benefiting up to 190,000 people, Shen said.
The lottery helped more than 6,000 children with hearing impairment and offered up to 12,000 aids for the group.
In total, about 5.4 million disabled received various rehabilitation services last year, CDPF figures showed.
Source: China Daily
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