Rwanda is set to adopt health system guidelines that will, among other outcomes, integrate a good quality and cost effective surgical care of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

This follows a new plan that advocates for improved treatment interventions of non-communicable diseases in the country.

This was announced at a two-day meeting that drew surgeons, anesthesiologists, general medical practitioners from district hospitals, nurses, and policy makers and development partners.

Organised by the Rwanda Surgical Society, participants sought to make experienced-based recommendations.

 In her remarks, on Saturday, the Minister for Health, Dr Agnes Binagwaho said, while there was a remarkable improvement in the country’s surgical system, there was still room for improvement.

 "We still have a long way to go in the number of resident surgeons; we have to go the next mile for quality.  We have to do our best to use the right equipment, we also have to educate medical doctors so we can have more specialists. We need to tackle other diseases. It is good to talk about cancer and surgery but we also need the medicine, radiotherapy and also what it takes to have that multi disciplinary team,” she said.

Dr Emile Rwamisirabo, the president of the Rwanda Surgical Society, noted that surgeons still had the task of ensuring that every district is catered for in terms of specialist care.

 "We gave ourselves the task of devoting the next years of surgery to the districts, which I think is extremely important. We also debated about specialty care and specialty development in many areas, including minimum intensive surgery, arthroscopy, and many others,” he said.

According to Dr Robert Riviello from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, seven billion people worldwide lack access to surgery when needed due to high costs of surgical treatment while 81 million people are impoverished by surgery every year.