The Rehabilitation Medicine Center of the Central Region – Rovisco Country (CMRRC-RP), in Tocha, in the municipality of Cantanhede (District of Coimbra), will build a house, equipped with technology, adapted for patients with disabilities.

The project will be presented this Wednesday, the day on which the 75th anniversary of the inauguration of the Colónia Rovisco Pais Hospital (former National Leprosarium, on whose grounds the CMRRC-RP has been installed since its creation in 1996) is celebrated.

“It will be an intelligent house, let’s say, where the technologies of the future are associated, adapted to be inhabited by someone who needs special support due to their mobility condition or any other disability,” the president of the Board of Directors revealed to the Lusa agency. of the Center for Rehabilitation Medicine, Isabel Bento.

The construction of the house began in August, at the CMRRC-RP, and will be linked to technology and robotics, with automatic commands, and will be able to “work with voice or other types of signals,” he exemplified.

It is up to the doctors and technicians of the CMRRC-RP to identify the needs that patients may have, so that it is a home that adapts to the needs of each user.

“Our professionals have collaborated with the company in identifying these technical requirements, so that we can have a finished product, to one day eventually be marketed or adapted to market needs,” explained Isabel Bento. The idea is that it be tested and used, that is, a prototype at the service of patients.

The project arises from a collaboration protocol, signed in 2020, between the Tocha rehabilitation center, the University of Aveiro, the Associação Desenvolvimento da Casa do Futuro (Inova Domus) and the Oli company.

In addition to the presentation of this project, the program includes a free visit to the Museum Center and the presentation of the book “História e Memórias do Hospital Colónia Rovisco Pais”, with the presence of the author of the book, Cristina Nogueira, and the Municipal Mayor de Cantanhede, Helena Teodosio.

Isabel Bento has also explained to the Portuguese agency that the construction works of a new building in the CMRRC-RP, intended for rehabilitation, for an amount of six million euros, are about to be completed.

According to the president of the Board of Directors of the Center for Rehabilitation Medicine, the construction began at the end of 2019 and will allow 64 more beds.

“With this expansion of our capacity, we will have 144 beds to cover the entire Central area”He concluded.

The new building “will develop areas that we do not yet have in operation” in the CMRRC-RP, such as the gait laboratory, the cardiorespiratory rehabilitation unit and the Snoezelen room.

Tocha Rehabilitation Medicine Center will reforest 50 surrounding hectares

The Centro de Medicina de Reabilitação da Região Centro – Rovisco Pais (CMRRC-RP), in Tocha, in the district of Coimbra, has signed a collaboration protocol aimed at reforesting 50 hectares of forest in its surroundings.

The CMRRC-RP signed a protocol with the company Altri, at the end of last year, to reforest 50 hectares of forest, and is currently awaiting the opinion of the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF).

“Here it will be possible to reconvert about 50 hectares of forest. We will have walkways here, construction of an access to the Teixoeiros lagoon, bike path, ”she told Lusa Isabel Bento, president of the Board of Directors of the Center for Rehabilitation Medicine.

“The project also contemplates the creation of a didactic space with information on the fauna and flora that exists in the place,” he added.

It is a leisure space for the community and also for users and professionals of the CMRRC-RP, in the village of Tocha, in the municipality of Cantanhede (District of Coimbra).

In addition to the construction of footbridges, the project also aims to destroy weeds and plant native species.

The CMRRC-RP has 144 hectares of forest, and with this protocol around 50 hectares will be reforested.

According to Isabel Bento, there were a series of natural phenomena that degraded this forest, namely the fires of 2017 and storm Leslie.

The idea is, through this project, to put part of this forest at the “service of the community and the internal community”.

“We believe that the added value of this process is not only the intrinsic value of this project, but an example of good practices, because we are going to do, let’s say, a public service that is open to the community in which a private company comes to help us,” he explained.

Isabel Bento admitted that the Tocha rehabilitation medicine center did not have “the conditions, nor the technical capacity to manage and order a forest that was destroyed.”

“The undergrowth quickly took over the forest and, therefore, in the face of this problem, we found this solution,” he concluded.

Integrated unit in the National Health Service (SNS), the Rehabilitation Medicine Center of the Central Region provides “differentiated health care in the area of ​​physical medicine and rehabilitation to the population residing in its area of ​​influence, corresponding to the six districts of the Sanitary Region of the Center” (Aveiro, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Guarda, Leiria and Viseu).