Rehabilitation access: Brain trauma exacerbated

In Ireland as many as 19,000 people acquire brain injuries every year from causes like strokes, road traffic accidents, falls, brain tumours and assaults.

Rebuilding their lives can be a long and tortuous affair, even with the help of family and friends.

Many are also fortunate to have the support of the charity Acquired Brain Injury Ireland.

However, despite more people surviving the major trauma of a brain injury, many young survivors are forced to live indefinitely in nursing homes or community hospitals without access to any rehabilitation to aid their recovery.

Many more are discharged from hospital and sent home to families who are often unable to cope.

Indeed, as ABI points out in a campaign it launches today, too many brain injury survivors face a lottery to access vital rehabilitation services because there are no specialist rehabilitation beds available outside Dublin.

ABI chief executive Barbara O’Connell puts it succinctly: “This country cannot continue to save a life on the one hand, but then rob their quality of life on the other hand by not providing rehabilitation to brain injury survivors.”

The organisation wants the Government to establish, as a matter of urgency, a regional neuro-rehabilitation centre.

That cannot happen a moment too soon.

It is utterly unacceptable that access to specialised services for those with acquired brain injury should depend on where they live.