Community-Based Rehabilitation in Nigeria: A Scoping Study of Literature

Purpose: Previous reviews of community-based rehabilitation literature provide scant evidence supporting community-based rehabilitation in Nigeria. This study aimed at discovering the extent of the community-based rehabilitation impact in Nigeria by reviewing published literature and making it available to researchers, CBR project coordinators and managers, and policy-makers. Method: A scoping study of community-based rehabilitation literature on people with disabilities, families, and communities in Nigeria was conducted, using the databases of Pubmed, African journal online, Google Scholar, African journal of disability, Asksource.info, and REHABDATA on naric.com, for articles published between the years 1990 – 2018. Fourteen studies met all the inclusion criteria and were classified according to type as descriptive (n = 4), theory (n = 5), impact (n = 2), and case studies (n = 2) or review (n = 1) papers. Results: The results indicated a recent increase in community-based rehabilitation literature publication. Conclusion: However, there is a need for more well-designed literature to better inform community-based rehabilitation practice.