Message

Greetings! The past years have been marked by milestones, the likes of which the medical community, and humanity as a whole, have never experienced before. The Department of Rehabilitation Medicine too is experiencing a landmark event as it moves beyond the fifty years of its existence. Challenge after challenge, the Department has survived and grown, emerging stronger and wiser. The latest of its accomplishments is producing this Acta Medica Philippina Rehabilitation Medicine Issue in the midst of the pandemic. This is a testimony of the Department’s commitment to promoting a culture of research, which has been identified as one of the strategies to attain the goals of the “Rehabilitation Decade in the Philippines (2020-2030): Optimizing Function Overcoming Disability”, formally launched in February 2020. We realized that so much can be done for all our stakeholders and that information gathered from well-designed researches will enable the Rehabilitation community to move forward with more confidence as it cares for its patients. Rehabilitation Medicine has a wide scope as clearly manifested in the diversity of topics in the articles of this institutional issue. We hope this can guide all of us in preventing disability and in empowering our patients to reach their optimum potential.   Sharon D. Ignacio, MD, DPBRM, FPARM Chair, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine College of Medicine and Philippine General Hospital University of the Philippines Manila