The Ministry of Health presented a two-year action plan for the implementation of the National Strategy for Creating a Barrier-Free Space in Ukraine until 2030
Barrier-free travel concerns millions of Ukrainians because it means removing barriers not only for people with disabilities but in general for people with limited mobility, young people, women, the elderly, children, and others.
The national strategy for creating a barrier-free space in Ukraine for the period up to 2030, adopted at the initiative of Olena Zelenska, provides for the creation of a barrier-free space in Ukraine in six main areas:
- Public and civil barrierlessness, which provides for ensuring equal opportunities for participation of all people and social groups in the life of communities and the state.
- Educational barrierlessness - creating equal opportunities and free access to education, including lifelong learning.
- Economic barrierlessness - providing conditions and opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship for young people, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, and so on.
- Information barrierlessness - conditions under which people, regardless of their functional disorders or communication capabilities, have access to information in various formats and using technologies that take into account their needs and capabilities.
- Physical barrierlessness - creating an environment in which public buildings and public places, transport and services are physically accessible to all public groups.
- Digital barrierlessness - providing access to information, communication, public and other online services for all public groups, including the elderly, people with disabilities, people living in rural areas, etc.
Now its further implementation is extremely relevant. Unfortunately, the war has exacerbated this issue: for example, numerous social groups such as veterans who have become disabled due to injuries, and internally displaced persons, including children, have felt the burden of barriers in everyday life.
“A full-scale war has set us new challenges. Barrierlessness is not just a word. It is a challenge. It is what we need to do for those we have to take care of. It is to solve this problem that we have developed and presented the flagship project of our ministry “Development of the rehabilitation care system”. The normative basis for the development of a modern rehabilitation system based on the principles of patient-centricity, multidisciplinarity, and evidence was developed before the full-scale war. Now we are bringing all this to life step by step. In a broad sense, it's about helping a person remove barriers to an active life. We are moving in this direction,” Viktor Liashko said.
It should be noted that the full-scale invasion of the russian federation did not prevent the implementation of the action plan for the introduction of the National Strategy for creating a barrier-free space in Ukraine in 2021-2022 for the period up to 2030. The government has now approved an action plan to implement the strategy for the next two years.
The document previously approved by the barrierlessness council defines four priority areas of work:
- barrier-free space,
- barrier-free products,
- barrier-free services,
- barrier-free information.
In accordance with this, each ministry will implement clear tasks, the implementation of which will bring Ukraine closer to European barrier-free standards.
The Ministry of Health of Ukraine is actively involved in the creation of a barrier-free space. So, among its tasks for 2023-2024, in particular, the following are defined:
For 2023:
- Launch of inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services in NHSU medical guarantee packages.
- Launch of electronic documentation of the rehabilitation process.
- Development of 77 institutions of the rehabilitation route – creation of rehabilitation departments, assistant technology offices.
- Cooperation between healthcare institutions and prosthetic enterprises.
- Formation of a vision of rehabilitation in the community and coordination of services.
- Provision of auxiliary rehabilitation equipment in the process of rehabilitation on the basis of assistive technology rooms.
- Strengthening institutions of highly specialized rehabilitation services (spinal cord injuries, burns, prosthetics and orthoses).
- Development of regulatory legal acts on licensing rehabilitation specialists.
- Adoption of regulatory legal acts for community rehabilitation and service coordination.
- Development of improved packages in the medical guarantee program with the inclusion of rehabilitation in the community.
For 2024:
- Launch rehabilitation in the community and integrate services.
- Formation of a three-tier system of rehabilitation assistance, in which there are centers for providing highly specialized assistance at the national level, institutions for providing non-specialized rehabilitation assistance at the regional level, and institutions for providing rehabilitation assistance at the community level.
To monitor the implementation of the action plan, an electronic monitoring tool will be introduced, which will demonstrate progress in the implementation of all planned activities in the areas. It will be available to both government agencies and the public.