The study is about the challenges both internal and external that Rehabilitation Services Providers, NGOs, Policy makers and implementers must be aware of and take into serious consideration, if their desires to initiate Community-Based rehabilitation Programs (CBRP) successfully in city communities can be a reality.

Alexander Kwesi Kassah

The study is based on information gathered in the field from the year 1997 to 1999 and was supported by the Scholarship Board of the University College of Harstad. Community-based Rehabilitation program is a strategy developed by the World Health Organisation, as an antidote to the expensive and inadequate rehabilitation services available to disabled people the world over. According to its architects, CBR programs are designed especially to take care of disabled people in rural communities. Emphasis on rural communities seems to be due to certain assumptions or characteristics that seem to make rural communities more suitable as areas for CBR practice. Situating a CBR program in the centre of Accra, where community life expectations seem difficult to live up to and begging has become a justifiable phenomenon, CBR programs are bound to face many challenges.

Alexander Kwesi Kassah is product of the University of Ghana, Legon. He completed the Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1986. He was enrolled as part of the National Service scheme for graduates as a teaching Assistant at the Department of Sociology, University of Ghana from 1986 to 1988. Hen then proceeded to the University of Tromsø in August 1988 to study the Norwegian Language and later in 1990, the Candidatus Politicarum degree program in Social Planning and Community Studies, which was completed in 1992. The period between 1993 and 1996 was devoted to part-time jobs as social worker, later combined with a year’s studies in professional psychology in 1994. In March 1996, he was appointed as a Sociology lecturer at the Department f Health and Social Sciences at Harstad College. In 1997, he was enrolled as a doctorate student at the University of Tromsø. He combined teaching with the doctorate studies up to date.


Alexander Kwesi Kassah, Høgskolen i Harstad, telefon 77 05 03 17 / 77 63 26 69 / 93 22 67 72. E-post: kwesi.kassah@hih.no

Les om avhandlingen på norsk:
http://www.hih.no/index.asp?nyhetsID=620