Thursday, June 14, 2007

CDOT Newsletter #10 (March 2007)

March 7th, 2007


Dear Friends,

The new year just started and already we have lots of news to report from our project. The organising group is very busy to prepare for the upcoming visit of the WFOT Executive in April. We expect great things to happen…

Greetings from Zurich

Christiane Mentrup

WFOT
2007 WFOT Interim Executive Meeting
In April the WFOT Executive will hold their Interim Executive Meeting in Cairo at the Nasser Institute. In addition to its internal meeting the WFOT Executive will also have an official visit and meeting schedule and we hope that this will add to the growing impetus behind the development of education programs for the profession here.

WFOT
Regional Occupational Therapy Conference
In April 27 and 28, 2007 a one and a half day conference will be held, including presentations from the WFOT management team members. Nine eminent international OT leaders will address areas of practice, service delivery and theory. The conference will be held under the auspices of Her Excellency the First Lady in cooperation with his Excellency the Minister of Health and is co-sponsored by the Ain Shams University and October 6 University. It is an opportunity for participating in a professional forum that can not be missed.
The organizing committee hopes to cater to the needs of occupational therapists in the region and those occupational therapists and non-occupational therapists interested in the development of occupational therapy services and education in Egypt.
To better meet this objective, please reply to this notice and let us know if you are interested in attending and which of the following topics would interest you. Please identify your three most appealing priorities from the list below:

1. Mental Health and Psychiatry
2. Work rehabilitation and vocational habilitation
3. Children with special needs and working with families
4. Geriatrics and aged care
5. Adult rehabilitation
6. Occupational therapy education

We look forward to hearing from you and encourage you to tell others. Come and celebrate with us the promotion of the occupational therapy profession.
Once we have heard from you we will send out a more detailed program with information..
Email your reply to : otcairo2007@yahoo.com
The registration fee will be 100 LE for Egyptian Nationals and US$100 for other participants.
In the near future the registration form will be available in hard copy and online at the WFOT website www.wfot.org

Mrs Susan Hartshorne
WFOT Ambassador to the Egypt Project
World Federation of Occupational Therapists
WFOT

After an initial contact some years ago we received the following message from a Canadian colleague:

“My name is Gloria Dueck. I am an Occupational Therapist from Canadacurrently working as a volunteer with an NGO in Ezbet El Nakhl, Cairo. I have been in Egypt for the past 3 years. I work in a centre forchildren ages 5 - 20 with a variety of disabilities. My main work at this centre is to provide training for the teachers on how they are better able to work with children with disabilities. I have held workshops on a variety of topics including development of children, sensory issues, Occupational Therapy theory, autism, etc. My term in Egypt is coming to an end and so my current goal is to leave behind a variety of materials that can continue to be used in training teachers at the centre.”

Gloria, it is good to hear from you again and we hope we can count on your support for our project in the future – even if you are about to leave the country.

Abbassiya Hospital
Ward 18
Professor Moneim Ashour reports about major improvements at ward 18 of Abbassiya Hospital. In addition to nutrition and drug treatment the occupational therapy related interventions are seen as the third relevant treatment aspect. The new concept is the result of international occupational therapists who visited the ward during the last years. Among several others it was Gillian Barrett who devoted lots of time and effort when evaluating functional abilities among the elderly clients and the quality of the environment. The results let to a range of interventions to upgrade the physical context to enable and stimulate the clients to do a range of activities. The changes were possible because of a generous financial contribution through the Cairo Rotary Club.

These changes led to a new focus within the Abbassiya Hospital, where now old age psychiatry and the newly evolving concepts in dementia care play a major role in interventions. A new day hospital for psychiatrically ill senior citizen is planed.

Professor Ashour reports that elderly people are now being welcomed at the Abbassiya Hospital like never before.

ADVANCE
Conference
The Egyptian Society for Developing Skills of Children with Special Needs, "ADVANCE", is a registered NGO with the Egyptian Ministry of Social Affairs, under No. 4646/99, and was founded in the year 1998 by a small group of dedicated parents and families of children with special needs.

The Learning Resource Center provides services to children of all ages who are experiencing learning and/or behavioural problems. LRC provides consultation for parents and schools, evaluation, therapy, parent education, and training. LRC staff represents a variety of disciplines including physicians, psychologists, occupational and physical therapists, speech & language pathologists; and educational specialists.

ADVANCE organizes an annual educational conference with the Learning Resource Center with the aim of up-dating the teachers' and specialist knowledge, creating awareness, sharing expertise, and disseminating information about the latest state-of-the-art interventions in the field of education, with an emphasis on special education.

Jointly, we have held very successful annual educational conferences in the spring for the last six years, and they were all hosted by the British International School in Cairo (BISC), and four of them were sponsored by UNESCO.

The conferences were entitled:
"Living & Learning" – 2001
“Interventions That Work” – 2002
"Merging Efforts" – 2003
"Circle of Inclusion" – 2004
"Embracing Diversity" – 2005
"Learning to Learn " – 2006
This year we are holding our conference the week-end of the 22nd to 24th of March 2007, and it will be once again hosted by the British International School in Cairo (BISC). The conference this year is entitled: "Making a Difference."

Please do not hesitate to call Mr. Yasser Salah, Conference Organizer, for any clarifications, at (+202) 516 3965 or 67.

Maha Helali
Chairman
ADVANCE Society

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