Photo: China Disabled Persons’ Federation
Construction on the University of Rehabilitation, a higher education institution designed for cultivating rehabilitation talent, formally began on June 11th with an inauguration ceremony in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province.
The proposal of construction on the institution was raised by China Disabled Persons’ Federation in 2015, chaired by Madame Zhang Haidi, and greenlighted by the Ministry of Education, with the joint support of the National Health Commission and sponsorship by Shandong Province.
Addressing the ceremony, Zhang Haidi expressed the hope that the University could cultivate more talented people and help bring better rehabilitation services to persons with disabilities in China and beyond.
The institution aims to implement a contemporary and advanced concept of rehabilitation, integrate medicine, life sciences and humanities, and become a world-class research-based and rehabilitation application-oriented university.
There are more than one billion persons with disabilities in the world, among whom 85 million are in China. Rehabilitation is an urgent need for disabled people and tens of millions of families. The country also has more than 40 million elderly people who have lost the ability in full or part to take care of themselves and need high-quality rehabilitation services.
