Community-Based Rehabilitation for Disaster and Emergency Situations in Low/Middle Income Countries

Disasters and emergency situations can affect many aspects of our lives, especially when it is at a large scale such as the incidents of the Indian ocean tsunami, Fukushima nuclear plant accidents created by the great east Japan earthquake and the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Situations like these require actions by our society as a whole, including rehabilitation. Under sudden and unusual situations there is a big demand to secure access to rehabilitation flexibly and timely, in collaboration with society and community. Nowadays in the field of disaster preparedness and response, researchers of rehabilitation are vital to explore effective methods to support those people affected. This Research Topic aims to contribute to the establishment of a methodology to secure rehabilitation access under disaster and emergency situations.

Access to rehabilitation is influenced by disaster and emergency situations differently in High Income Countries (HICs) and in Low/Middle Income Countries (LMICs). By cultural, historical and social context, effective methods in LMICs should differ from the ones in HICs. Due to limitations of governmental and industrial resources, community must play significantly bigger roles to secure rehabilitation access in LMICs than in HICs. The goal of this Research Topic is to explore effective methods of community-based rehabilitation for disaster and emergency situations in LMICs. It is expected that many of the researchers and practitioners contributing to this project will do so by introducing their activities in LMICs.

We welcome articles on topics such as;

1. Life of persons with disabilities under disaster and emergency situations in LMICs

2. Needs of rehabilitation under disaster and emergency situations in LMICs

3. Rehabilitation skills and assistive technology applied for LMIC’s community under disaster and emergency situations

5. Community mobilization for disaster and emergency situations in LMICs

6. Policy to promote community-based rehabilitation for disaster and emergency situations

7. Social system to secure rehabilitation access under disaster and emergency situations

8. Community education to prepare for disaster and emergency situations

9. Collaboration with self-help groups and disabled people’s organizations

10. Disability inclusive disaster risk reduction (DIDRR)

11. Cultural, historical, religious and social implications for rehabilitation access under disaster and emergency situations in LMICs

Keywords: Community-Based Rehabilitation, Disaster Rehabilitation, Emergency Rehabilitation

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.