RISE. In Indonesia, the number of deaf persons is 145,961 people and 81,554 people with speech impairments. Data from WHO in 2015, around 76-85% of people with disabilities do not receive treatment and still experience discrimination in various fields, so that their rights have not been fulfilled, especially in health services. Persons wit h disabilities, do not receive optimal health services because of the inability of health workers to provide information and communication for the services they need.
Communication for speech-impaired and deaf patients usually uses sign language. Therefore, Community Development together with SCOME CIMSA FK UNRI took the initiative to hold a ComDev called RISE (Breaking The Silence).
According to CIMSA Indonesia Priorities, the objectives of this ComDev are to organize activities in collaboration with disability-focused communities or organizations inclusivity-focused and to conduct sign language training activities.
The goals are to increase the knowledge of medical students at the University of Riau about the conditions of patients with disabilities to improve the quality of health services for patients with disabilities by helping to produce prospective doctors who have basic sign language skills. And also the Medical students who are part of the target community can communicate in sign language.
RISE is an activity carried out by ComDev CIMSA FK UNRI together with SCOME CIMSA FK UNRI which is carried out with 2 interventions. Intervention 1 was carried out on Saturday, 08 April 2023. RISE activities were filled with talk show sessions by drg. Marceline Olivia and interactive discussions with two BISINDO instructors.
Prior to the talk show and interactive discussion sessions. Apart from that, there was also a roleplay session between the instructor and the participants to test the participants’ understanding of the sign language that had been taught previously. Participants who took part in this RISE activity achieved more than the targets.
RISE is carried out with the target of increasing knowledge, understanding, and awareness of the importance of basic sign language skills within the scope of health services. With the completion of the RISE 1 intervention, this had a positive impact on all participants and all participants who came, marked by the completion of the post test questions and the assessment results which increased in value compared to the pre test.
Hopefully, by this ComDev can help people with disabilities to be known and understood more and also to improve medical students to Empowering Medical Students and Improving Nation’s Health.