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When disaster strikes, saving lives is the priority. But what happens to the people who sustain injuries such as amputations, spinal cord damage, brain injury, or complex fractures if rehabilitation is not part of the response plan from the start?
That question shaped a four-day training workshop held in Nadi, Fiji, from 14 to 17 April 2026, where 23 emergency managers, rehabilitation professionals, and partner representatives from 12 countries piloted a new World Health Organization (WHO) toolkit designed to help ministries of health build rehabilitation into their emergency preparedness planning.
With financial and technical support from Australian National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre’s (NCCTRC) Regional Engagement Program, WHO teams delivered used the toolkit in a pilot workshop in the Western Pacific, a region with high disaster exposure, and direct and recent experience of the emergencies the training was designed for.
Funded by the Australian Government, NCCTRC’s Regional Engagement Program has been partnering with WHO in emergency preparedness and response activities in the Western Pacific for over a decade. This recent activity represents an important development of this partnership to support the strengthening of rehabilitation preparedness and response in the region.
Why does rehabilitation matter in a health emergency?
When rehabilitation is left out of emergency preparedness and response plans, it tends to arrive late in a crisis, if at all. That delay leads to avoidable long-term disability and poorer outcomes for people with amputations, spinal cord and brain injuries, and other complex trauma.
Rehabilitation, including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, prosthetics, physical and rehabilitation medicine, and related services that help people recover function after injury or illness, is recognized as an essential health service in emergencies. The World Health Assembly Resolution 76.6 exists precisely because most countries have not built rehabilitation into their emergency plans.
Consultations with Member States and partners found the barrier was rarely a lack of will. More often, it was a lack of clarity on the practical “how”: what specific steps a ministry of health should take, and in what order, to embed rehabilitation in national emergency systems. WHO developed the Integrating Rehabilitation into Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Toolkit and the accompanying training piloted in Fiji, to answer that question.
How does the toolkit help close that gap?
Rather than treating rehabilitation as a stand-alone technical area, the toolkit walks countries through where it fits across the full emergency preparedness cycle, from policy, legislation and coordination, through workforce and financing, to information management, infrastructure and supplies, risk communication and community engagement.
Over the course of the workshop, participants used a rapid assessment tool to evaluate their own countries’ rehabilitation preparedness against their national emergency and health policy documents, then worked through each area of the toolkit in small groups. Detailed feedback gathered throughout the pilot will feed directly into the final version of the toolkit ahead of its formal launch in late 2026.
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Emergency specialists and rehabilitation experts collaborate during WHO’s rehabilitation in health emergencies workshop in Nadi, Fiji. © NCCTRC
“Rehabilitation should be integrated into both emergency response and routine services,” said Lluis Vinyals Torres, Director of Health Systems and Services at WHO Western Pacific. “This pilot workshop shows what is possible when countries have practical tools and approaches to build rehabilitation into health systems. We thank the Australian Government for its support for this important work.”
Why train emergency managers and rehabilitation specialists together?
Training emergency and rehabilitation experts together let them learn directly from the other. A deliberate feature of the workshop was pairing emergency managers who do not work in rehabilitation with rehabilitation focal points, roughly half of participants coming from each background. Clinicians could explain what rehabilitation in a crisis requires, while emergency management specialists could see why it belongs to their agenda.
“I’ve learned over the last four days just how important rehabilitation is as an essential component of the country’s health emergency preparedness plan,” said Leanne Maqiti Ngassi, a physiotherapist with the Solomon Islands Ministry of Health and Medical Services. “My role can really have a huge impact on those affected.”
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Participants take part in a table-top emergency simulation exercise during WHO’s rehabilitation in health emergencies workshop in Nadi, Fiji. © NCCTRC
The training culminated in a table-top exercise simulating an emergency response, where participants applied everything covered across the previous three days to a live scenario. “We’ve had a really good learning experience here,” said Dr Balraj Singhal, representing the International Spinal Cord Society. “We need to be ready in the future for these emergencies, and for rehabilitation to be at the forefront, not an afterthought.”
How is rehabilitation becoming part of emergency preparedness across the region?
Every participating country and organization left the workshop with a set of concrete actions to take home. Some of them, including Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, are planning to roll the toolkit out nationally, with Papua New Guinea also planning to fold rehabilitation content into its national rehabilitation strategic plan.
Cook Islands, the Philippines, Samoa, and Tonga, are reviewing their existing policy and strategy documents to identify gaps the finalized toolkit can help address. Partner organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, UNICEF, and the Fred Hollows Foundation, also identified ways to build rehabilitation preparedness into their own country-level work. In addition, NCCTRC will apply lessons from the pilot to support rehabilitation planning in Australia’s Northern Territory.
“I’m going to ensure that our decision makers are aware of how important rehabilitation is, not only in health emergencies, but also in health as a whole,” said Karen Nathania Ngamata, Public Health Coordinator with the Cook Islands Ministry of Health.
With the pilot complete, WHO is now finalizing the toolkit for formal launch later in 2026, drawing on the feedback and country experiences generated in Fiji. The training itself is expected to be rolled out more widely across regions in the years ahead, giving more countries the practical, system-level guidance for building rehabilitation into their emergency planning.