Rwandans suffering from gallbladder inflammation, known as Cholecystitis, and soon other ailments that require surgery, will no longer need large incisions thanks to minimally invasive surgery.

The plan is to scale up the technology to be used in other major surgeries.

This was noted by Dr Théobald Hategekimana, the Director General at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK), during the Joint Minimally Invasive Surgery and 3rd Rwanda Biotechnology Conference that took place on Thursday September 26, at Kigali Convention Centre.

Minimally invasive surgery allows a surgeon to use techniques that limit the size and number of cuts or incisions needed in an operation as opposed to traditional open surgery.

The surgeon uses light tools, cameras, and lightings that fit through several tiny cuts in the patient’s skin to perform an operation without opening a lot of skin and muscle.

CHUK has been using this surgical procedure on rare cases and with low standards because of scarcity of specialists on the subject matter, said Hategekimana.

"We had two specialists in this kind of surgery and this procedure was being used mostly in orthopedics (deformities of bones or muscles), but we want it to extend to other areas such as gynecology, gastroenterology (deals with digestive system) and neurology (deals with nervous system) to name but a few,” Hategekimana added.

During the conference, an ongoing operation through minimally invasive surgery was live-stream from King Faisal Hospital where a gallbladder removal surgery was successfully carried out on a patient.

"There is an ongoing training on Minimally Invasive Surgery taking place at CHUK with 10 surgeons as pioneers and other materials were purchased to increase the usage of this surgical procedure,” Hategekimana said.

According to Prof. Jacob Souopgui, who was recently appointed as board chairman of King Faisal Hospital, among the 10 surgeons, five are general surgeons, four gynecologists and one neurologist.

"They began training at the beginning of this year and are already performing some cases, which is encouraging”.

The Cameroonian scholar said that the first cohort will complete their training in December this year and at the beginning of next year, another group will be admitted.

"We not only want the technology to be applied in Kigali hospitals; as we train more doctors, we want the technology to be extended to rural hospitals as well.”

The pioneer group will also be helping to train the other groups that will follow.

He remarked that minimally invasive surgeries, he said, have more advantages over normal surgeries;

"Due to smaller and minimal cuts, it reduces risks of infections, hospital stay, patient’s amount of pain, recovery time and the scars won’t be more noticeable.”

Meanwhile the State Minister for Public Health and Primary Healthcare, Dr Patrick Ndimubanzi, allayed fears over the affordability of the operation saying "there would be no quality healthcare without equity, and since many Rwandans are covered by Mutuelle de Santé, the only issue is that it’s delaying to reach every hospital in the country. Otherwise, it’s affordable through Mutuelle de Santé.”

Souopgui got involved in Rwandan health sector after he revealed his involvement in several biotechnology and health projects in partnership with different African universities, University of Rwanda included.

This was during the 2017 Rwanda Day that took place in Belgium when he received the President’s invite to introduce his activities in Rwanda.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com