The Health Organization – WHO – has defined the achievement of universal health coverage as one of the priority strategic objectives to address sustainable development SDG 3 in its General Program of Work 2019-2023 (13 PGT). To address this in terms of rehabilitation services, the WHO Rehabilitation Program has launched its strategy «Rehabilitation 2030: a call to action».

Rehabilitation is a fundamental health service for people throughout the life cycle and is necessary for a variety of acute and chronic health conditions, including cancer. In this sense, it is essential that rehabilitation services be established and strengthened in accordance with the needs of the population. This means identifying the rehabilitation interventions that should be prioritized for integration into the health system, and the resources needed to deliver them safely and effectively. This guidance would go a long way toward strengthening health systems for rehabilitation, informing health policy, planning, and budgeting.

From these needs, the Rehabilitation Intervention Package (PRI) is born as an initiative of the WHO framed in its Rehabilitation 2030 strategy. This will include information on rehabilitation interventions that are relevant for people in all stages of life, as throughout the entire care process, across all service delivery platforms and in all regions of the world, with a specific focus on middle-income countries.

Therefore, the goal is to develop an evidence-based Rehabilitation Intervention Package (PRI) to be used by countries to plan, budget, and integrate rehabilitation interventions across service delivery. Therefore, the PRI will provide a basis for defining country costs associated with:

• The implementation of rehabilitation interventions.
• Service provision areas, time, assistive technologies, equipment and necessary supplies.
• Necessary manpower for the implementation of rehabilitation interventions.

In accordance with the goals previously described by the WHO, the teacher Catalina Lopera Muñetón, who works as a professor of the Physiotherapy program at the Medellín campus and as leader of the national group of experts in Oncological Physiotherapy – Palliative Care and HIV (EGOPHI ) and representative before the international subgroup of Word Physiotherapy (WPT) the IPT-HOPE; has been selected to work with the WHO Rehabilitation Program team in the development of the Rehabilitation Intervention Package (PRI).

Its association as a member of the Cancer Development Group on behalf of Colombia aims to work, together with other countries, in strengthening evidence-based rehabilitation in the different health systems and in the entire care process at the level of worldwide for the needs of cancer patients.

Congratulations to Professor Catalina for her work and for raising the name of Colombia and María Cano worldwide.

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