The annual intake of medical students at the University of Rwanda (UR) is set to triple from about 100 to over 300 this year, in line with Rwanda’s strategy to significantly increase healthcare workers, according to the Minister of Health, Dr Sabin Nsanzimana.
The minister disclosed on January 10, as health ministry officials appeared before the Lower House’s Committee on Political Affairs and Gender to respond to issues surrounding healthcare provision to residents.
The issues, which include inadequate health service delivery due to insufficient medical personnel, were exposed by the Office of Ombudsman’s report for the fiscal year 2022/2023.
Nsanzimana said that this is a problem they are aware of, and the ministry is looking for a solution to it.
He pointed out that the insufficiency of healthcare workers can be attributed to various factors, one of them being their limited availability in the labour market.
To address the problem, greater effort was needed, including training more medical personnel, he indicated.
To that end, he said that Rwanda started a 4×4 strategy in 2023, which seeks to increase fourfold the number of healthcare workers in the country within four years.
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The strategy, he said, was approved by the Cabinet on July 13, 2023, and was given a national priority. The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education were given a mandate to follow up on its implementation, such as by bringing together medical personnel trainers for the strategy to be effectively executed.
"A few months after the inception of the strategy, we see promising results. For instance, while we used to have about 100 students who start the first year in the medical department, we made few changes in partnership with the Ministry of Education and the University of Rwanda such that this year, we will enroll more than 300 medical students in the University of Rwanda alone,” he said.
He added that it is expected other medical schools will also increase the number of medical students, all aiming to align with the strategy to increase fourfold the number of medical personnel in the country, but at the same time "we ensure that the quality of healthcare is maintained.”
On May 11, 2023, Nsanzimana told lawmakers that medical reforms under the above-mentioned four-year strategy could help the country to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs) burden, along with infectious diseases.
The reforms include producing more healthcare workers and retaining them; strengthening primary healthcare (especially through community health system reform), and strategic acquisition of medical equipment. The reforms could cost between $237 million (approx. Rwf300 billion at current exchange rates) and over $1.15 billion (more than Rwf1.4 trillion), depending on the number or scale of the required interventions, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
Importantly, Nsanzimana said, the medical reforms seek to help the country reach the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation of at least four healthcare workers per 1,000 people (by 2028).
The healthcare workers include doctors, midwives, and nurses, he indicated, pointing out that the full programme to increase their number would cost about $293 million (approx. Rwf370 billion).
Currently, he said, Rwanda has one healthcare worker per 1,000 population, which is far short of the minimum of four healthcare workers per 1,000 population as recommended by WHO.