International Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy, The 11th Conference, Sevilla in Spain       
               
  To Restructure Rehabilitation Medicine     
    GELU ONOSE, MD, PhD, MSc

Senior Physician in Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM) and Gerontology & Geriatrics (GG)
PhD/ Post-Graduate Tutor - at the (State) University of Medicine and Pharmacy ”Carol Davila”, Bucharest, Romania
Head of the P(neural-muscular)RM Discipline/ Clinic Division - the National Reference Centre for NeuroRehabilitation - and of its RDI Nucleus, and RDI (ex) Director, at the Teaching Emergency Hospital "Bagdasar-Arseni", in Bucharest, Romania

Dear fellows and friends,

The International Biophilia Rehabilitation Conference (IBRC) has reached now to its 11th Edition - that will be held on the 12 and 13th of September, 2014, in Seville, Spain.

The collaboration, started in 2011, of the Romanian Society for NeuroRehabilitation (RoSNeRa) - which is also a co-sponsor/ -organizer of this edition - with the International Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy (IBRA), has been consolidated, over time, including with the contribution of the President, together with some diligent colleagues, members of the RoSNeRa, to the development of the Biophilia Rehabilitation Journal.

As a consequence of the consolidation of our collaboration, the promotion of this event we have made, will hopefully result in an enhanced participation of Romanian colleagues at the IBRC 2014.

Through this new and hopefully very fruitful international academic joint event, we want, including with the contribution of the above mentioned Romanian scientific society - and of others which focus on Rehabilitation - to make a step forward in the Rehabilitation multidisciplinary collaborative research, at a global level, in order to better approach the needs of a population characterized, on one hand, by the growing number of persons with neural (mainly motor, cognitive/ communication, respectively sensorial) and/or some muscle-skeletal, severe disabilities and on the other, by continuous and accelerated demographic aging - i.e. with more elderly, that are prone to poli-pathology - in need, including for Rehabilitation and/or Assistive facilities/ technologies.

To be emphasized that our common endeavors to develop, at global level, Rehabilitation, are subsumed in the general very strong and important trend towards multimodal combating of disabilities, supported and boosted by the World Health Organization (WHO), together, mainly, with the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM), the World Federation for NeuroRehabilitation (WFNR), the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) and the World Bank: as it is known, on the 23rd of May 2014, the 67th World Health Assembly endorsed the “WHO global disability action plan 2014-2021: Better health for all people with disability” and, as it is determined within a very recent related press release of the ISPRM leadership: ”Disability and Rehabilitation is now a major area of the agenda of WHO”.

So, personally and on behalf of my Romanian colleagues who are actively working for the overall development and improvement of Rehabilitation, I wish a great success to the 11th IBRC, 2014.