Rwanda is in negotiations with Finland to finance the construction of an ‘ultramodern hospital’ block in an effort to expand Kacyiru Hospital and diversify its medical services to patients.

The development was announced by officials from the Ministry of Health last week, during public hearings held by the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in response to the query raised by the report of the Auditor General for the financial year ended June 10, 2021.

The report indicated that on January 10, 2016, Kacyiru hospital (located in Gasabo District), signed a contract worth over Rwf8 billion with Fair Construction Ltd for the expansion works.

The project execution period was 18 months starting from February of that year, and the works were to be completed in August 2017.

According to the report, the objective of the ultramodern hospital was to deliver highly skilled services to the population within the country and in the region, to function as an emergency operations centre for disasters or wartime care coordination; and to become a teaching and research centre in different fields.

However, the audit showed that the construction works of this hospital stopped on April 27, 2016 (two months after commencing works by the contractor).

According to the report, the hospital terminated the contract with the contractor due to shortage of funds to finance the project. By the time of the audit in October 2021, (five years after the project was stopped), construction works had not yet resumed.

In addition, the hospital management incurred ‘fruitless’ expenditure amounting to over Rwf248 million as a cost of terminating the contract, paid to the contractor (compensation and liability claims of the contractor), due to early contract cancellation.

Responding to the concerns, Dr. Corneille Killy Ntihabose, Head of Clinical and Public Health Services Department at the Ministry of Health, told PAC members that the project had stalled, but it is at the phase of getting a funder.

Currently, he said, Rwanda is in negotiations with Finland, which include conducting a feasibility study for the hospital block construction, through a company called Vamed – a global provider for hospitals and other facilities in the healthcare sector in terms of planning, construction, and operation of healthcare facilities.

"What remains is signing the financing agreement for that project, such that it will cover different [health] services which were not included, at the same time expand the capacity of Kacyiru Hospital,” he said.

Speaking to The New Times, Ntihabose said that the project sought to expand Kacyiru Hospital which currently focuses on maternity, and child healthcare, indicating that this was meant to include other services, which were not [adequately] covered in its medical package, such as surgery, and internal medicine.

Ntihabose said that Gasabo is a district with increasing population, indicating that it is the first most populated district in the country [with over half a million population, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda].

Also, he said, in response to the growing population in the district, the project factors in the increase of the hospital bed capacity [it has around 100 beds in the maternity section], so that there will not be overcrowding in future, rather, people will be getting health services effectively.

He said that it is estimated the project could cost over €20 million (over Rwf20.4 billion), overall, but indicated that the final project cost will be determined by the feasibility study.

"The feasibility study will indicate the services that have to be covered, and the number of beds that should be used,” he said, pointing out that the study could start by the end of this year, if things go as expected.