Disaster management committee officials from Musanze and Rubavu districts, over the weekend, completed a five-day training workshop on how to deal with disasters.

The training was organized and conducted by the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs in partnership with the National University of Rwanda’s School of Public Health.

According to Commissioner Cyprian Gatete, of the National Disaster Management Centre, the workshop that was held in Musanze district, focused on how public health issues can be effectively addressed during a disaster.

Public health emergency planning and management featured in the course whose objective was to enhance the awareness and skills planning, preparedness, response and recovery of the committees in the two districts.

"The two districts were chosen because they are prone to various disasters. In May this year the two districts were hit by landslides and floods that destroyed property, crops and even killed people,” Commissioner Gatete said in an interview Sunday.

Gatete noted that the workshops are a priority and shall be extended to various districts throughout the country. The recently established Ministry of Disaster Management is stepping up efforts to develop the capacity of district and sector committees so that their capacity to prevent and respond to disaster is high.

Participants who included the police, UNICEF and Red Cross representatives, district medical and agricultural officers, acquired the skills to assess priority hazards as well as conduct vulnerability and risk assessment in their areas.

"It is important that we prevent these disasters in order to fit in the UNs Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of Poverty Eradication and that is why President Paul Kagame was elected the Co-chair of the UN Millennium Goals. We shall set examples to other countries,” Gatete said.

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