Standards & Guidelines

The standards aim to ensure that education programmes have the infrastructure and resources to develop students into entry-level practitioners that can increase access to services and provide the appropriate quality of P&O services.

To improve access to prosthetics and orthotics services, WHO, in partnership with the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), launched in 2017 the WHO Standards for Prosthetics and Orthotics Standards and an implementation manual to assist Member States in setting up, improving, or transforming their systems for delivering these services.

In light of developing world realities and the immediate need to develop functioning systems for wheelchair provision in less-resourced parts of the world, the ISPO organised in 2006, in collaboration with WHO, USAID and other organisations, the “Consensus Conference on Wheelchairs for Developing Countries”. The discussion and the consensus reached at the conference were instrumental for the development of the “WHO Guidelines on the Provision of Manual Wheelchairs in less resourced settings”. This guidelines served as a document to assist WHO Member States to create and develop a local wheelchair provision system.

ISPO and ISO/Technical Committee (TC) 168 Prosthetics and Orthotics work together on the development of International Standards and Projects to overcome the global challenges of increasing mobility and independence of life of people with disabilities.

ISPO and the ISO/Technical Committee (TC) 168 Prosthetics and Orthotics work together on the development of International Standards and Projects to overcome the global challenges of increasing mobility and independence of life of people with disabilities.