Reference is made to an article that was published in Uganda's Daily Monitor on October 3 under the headline, “Rwanda has only one surgeon for 11 million people.”
I would like to commend the media for their role
in raising key issues that affect the population, but in the case of
this article, the writer gave the wrong impression of Rwanda’s health
sector as far as the number of medical personnel is concerned.
I would also like to correct the facts given in
this article by stating that from an estimated 30 doctors in the
aftermath of the 1994 genocide, today, Rwanda has more than 171 medical
specialists, including 37 surgeons, and 30 surgeons in training, a big
number of the surgeons in training are from the Central University
Hospital of Kigali (CHUK).
The specialists are distributed in referral and
district hospitals. Healthcare services are always delivered to the best
of the personnel’s moral and professional standards.
I wish to point out that the government of Rwanda,
through the ministry of Health, has created different partnerships,
which from time to time provide support to building the necessary health
workforce to create a high quality, sustainable healthcare system.
On many an occasion, we receive different visiting
teams of specialists. A case in point being the recent one from India
and Nigeria in partnership with Rotary Club who are offering free
plastic surgery to survivors of the 1994 genocide.
In addition, Rwanda’s efforts to bridge the
geographical access gap to quality healthcare have paid off. We have
five referral hospitals, 42 district hospitals and 470 health centres.
Sixty per cent of Rwandans live within 5km of a health facility and 85
per cent live within 10km. This implies that even patients that need
specialised treatment or care can easily access the services.
While our country has registered a lot of progress
in the health sector over the past 10 years, efforts to ensure
universal access to quality healthcare for all Rwandans continue and
this is a process that will not be completed overnight.
Fill clinical gaps
More than 90 per cent of the population can acquire healthcare, especially with the current medical insurance system in place.
The most recent Rwandan innovation is the introduction of the Human Resources for Health (HRH) last year.
CHUK, where I have worked since 1994, increased
the quality of care in collaboration with many partners, but the benefit
from the HRH programme is highly appreciated in terms of increasing the
number of students in postgraduate programme and clinical activities.
The HRH programme is a partnership with the US
government that allows bringing 100 American faculty members for a year
in Rwanda at no cost for Kigali.
These highly experienced health professionals and
academicians fill clinical gaps and help the faculty to improve its
teaching capacity and support Rwanda to produce a bigger number of
qualified medical doctors and specialists.
With this programme, we will train 500 specialists
and 5,000 nurses before 2018. We can also add 50 more Rwandan residents
in specialisation programmes outside the country. This will
dramatically increase our population’s access to qualified and
skilled-level Rwandan clinicians.
It will also help our medical students and
residents to be educated by more skilled Rwandan educators, in health
sciences - medical nursing, midwifery, and oral health.
The HRH programme and other homegrown solutions
are some of the actions taken by the government to improve the lives of
the Rwandan people. The fruits of such endeavours are already visible
with life expectancy having doubled.
The Daily Monitor article gets it right,
that there is a lot to do in our journey to developing the health
sector, but it does not give the correct figures of our health personnel
or current status of general access to quality healthcare for our
citizens.
Dr Hategekimana is the director of the Central University Hospital of Kigali
*The article was also carried by Africareview.com
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
