TEHRAN — Some 400,000 Iranians with disabilities are issued with the International Classification of Functioning (ICF), a framework approved by the World Health Assembly for describing and organizing information on functioning and disability.

Anoushirvan Mohseni-Bandpey, the director of Iran’s Welfare Organization said out of 1.2 million people with disabilities under the coverage of the organization, 400,000 can benefit the ICF on international scale as it outlines the kind of disability they are dealing with and their medical history comprehensively.

For instance, it can be of practical use to those athletes participating in Paralympic Games, Mohseni-Bandpey told the Tehran Times on Monday.

He went on to say that the Welfare Organization is committed to providing all the 1.2 million people with disabilities with ICF by the middle of the next Iranian calendar year (falling on September 2017).

On the subject of creating job opportunities for people with disabilities he explained that “we have generated some 45,000 jobs last year 60 percent of which pertained to people with disabilities and we hope to be able to do the same thing in the current year.”

ICF was officially endorsed by the World Health Organization in 2001.

The aims of the ICF are to provide a scientific basis for understanding and studying health and health-related states, outcomes, determinants, and changes in health status and functioning; establish a common language for describing health and health-related states in order to improve communication between different users, such as health care workers, researchers, policy-makers and the public, including people with disabilities; permit comparison of data across countries, health care disciplines, services and time; and provide a systematic coding scheme for health information systems.