The Community Based Inclusive Development (CBID) Unit Therapy Center of the Antique provincial government will resume its free services for children with cerebral palsy and developmental delays this March after it was temporarily halted in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Angie Liz Vagilidad, Provincial Disability Affairs Office-CBID Unit officer-in-charge, in an interview Thursday, said resumption will be on the first week of March with “now 10 children who are waiting to undergo physical therapy treatment.”

The operation of the CBID Unit in Barangay 8 here was temporarily suspended two weeks after it opened on July 21, 2020 following the lockdown at the height of the pandemic.

With the lockdown, children were prohibited to travel outside of their homes and to have close contact with other people, aside from their close family members.

“With the movement restriction now lifted in the province, parents may now bring their children to the CBID Unit,” she said.

She said they will cater to eight new children-clients in addition to the first two that started their therapy sessions before the pandemic struck.

Vagilidad said the CBID Unit has an ongoing expansion to have two more rooms for consultation and therapy.

“Currently, we only have one therapy room but once the expansion will be finished there will be additional rooms for consultation and therapy of the children,” she said.

On Feb. 20, a research consortium from the De La Salle (DLS) -Medical and Health Science Institute College of Medicine, University Medical Center Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine and the DLS University-Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Health Technologies visited the CBID Unit for their project proposal Tulong, Ugnayan ng Lingap At gabaY (TULAY): Co-designing Community Physical Rehabilitation in the Philippines that aims to produce a co-design, sustainable community-based self-management physical rehabilitation program.

“Through the TULAY, the CBID Unit is also intended to cater comprehensively even adult patients who need the therapy due to stroke,” Vagilidad said.on

TULAY will be implemented in collaboration with the University of Plymouth with funding from the United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care.

The province of Antique currently has 769 stroke cases among children that had been reported from its nine municipalities that submitted their reports to the CBID Unit. (PNA)