PET Physiotherapy ends its activities

The Physiotherapy Course Tutorial Education Program Escola Bahiana de Medicina e Saúde Pública (PET – Physiotherapy) held, on August 31, the Final Seminar with patients from the HTLV Center of the Teaching-Care Outpatient Clinic of Bahiana (ADAB). 

The meeting ended the activities of PET – Physiotherapy, which, over the course of a year, offered an exercise program based on the booklet: “Guidelines and Exercises for people with HAM/TSP”, organized by the Research Group on Dynamics of the Neuromusculoskeletal System of the Bahiana. The tool aims to encourage patients' self-care by offering them a kit with the necessary materials, in addition to guidelines for performing the exercises outside the clinical environment. Patients and caregivers participated in the educational activities.

The Final Seminar featured group work with appropriate dynamics to ensure the fidelity of the execution and maintenance of home exercises, encouraging self-care and autonomy of the program participants, in order to promote the delay of neurological symptoms and, therefore, offer a better quality of life. The program also included a seminar with dynamics of “Motivation & Empathy” and a final meeting.

During the meeting, the participants also received the news that the follow-up with the group will continue with care at the ADAB Advanced Clinic in Physiotherapy (CAFIS) and will be coordinated by the physiotherapist Naiane Patrício, who carries out this activity with HTLV patients, since 2007, when studied Physiotherapy at Bahiana. “Then, I went into the master's, doing this follow-up with the patients due to a clinical trial that was carried out in Maíra Macedo's doctorate program, which has been following these patients since 2000. Through this doctorate, the exercise booklet emerged and, from there, PET came up”, says Naiane, who is currently taking a master's course at Bahiana.

In addition to physical care and prevention, program participants were qualitatively evaluated by the doctoral student in Medicine and Human Health by Bahiana, Genildes Oliveira Santana who monitored the psychological and emotional benefits of the patients. "This moment they lived here in the Bahiana it was extremely important, as they had more time to resolve doubts in the booklet, and they repeated the exercises more often. This not only benefited the physical part, but made them more socialized among themselves and with the group's physiotherapists. We feel that they are happier today”.

"I have been a patient at the HTLV Center for many years and what was most important in this one year of work was the support, development and lessons they gave us, about our body, our organism, how to better develop our exercises with easier learning”, says patient Iranildes Santos da Silva.

The coexistence between the patients themselves, by participating in all the activities of the HTLV Center and related programs, such as this one, strengthened the implementation of the creation of the HTLVida association, which is established and legalized, with 112 members. “The association is already established and will provoke the municipal, state and federal spheres, with the aim, precisely, of giving what is right for both the holder and the citizen. That's what we want: to provoke the instances so that we have at least a little quality of life, since there is no cure for our problem, HTLV, but that there is respect for the citizen, for the person who lives with this virus”, declares the president of the association, Adjeane Oliveira de Jesus.

Among the difficulties, she also points out the lack of space to gather members, carry out activities and organize the organization in an organized manner. "The association is now structured and legalized, what is really lacking is a space for us to hold meetings, because the Bahiana it does not support all the actions of the association, including the basic structure for all needs. But the PET comes to the association with a form of interaction, of welcoming, of bringing the group, because it is not just physiotherapy, it has the work of welcoming, involvement, participation, companionship, we meet here again. The motivation to come, to meet again, that's very good”.

“Salvador is one of the cities with the highest prevalence of HTVL in Brazil, so we have an important disease that many people have and don't even know about, the virus is transmitted in the same way as HIV and we need to make it visible. Hence the importance of research and the HTLVida Association to give visibility and ensure that they are also served by public policies”, reiterates Selena Dubois, professor of the Physiotherapy course and coordinator of PET – Physiotherapy.

PET - Physiotherapy

The Tutorial Education Program was funded by the Foundation for Research Support of the State of Bahia (FAPESB) and by Bahiana and aimed to enable the expansion of technical, scientific and humanist training of undergraduates of the Physiotherapy course by promoting education, qualified work, encouraging science, culture, the provision of reference services with responsibility and social commitment in training activities and information on basic exercises to deal with neuromusculoskeletal symptoms in HTLV-1 infected people with HAM/TSP – Tropical Spastic Paraparesis / HTLV-1 Associated Myelopathy and their caregivers.