The Ministry of Health (MoH) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UK based Minimally Invasive Surgery Training Institute in Kent (MISTIK), to improve surgery technology the country as well as empower local specialists to operate using new technologies.

The signing took place Thursday at the MoH headquarters in Kigali between the Health Minister, Richard Sezibera, and the Director of MISTIK, Martin Sheriff.

Sezibera said that the initiative would greatly improve the capacity local hospitals to handle complicated healthcare challenges, thus saving the state from spending a lot of money sending citizens abroad for treatment.

"We are expanding centres at the University Hospital of Butare, King Faisal Hospital and CHUK, to accommodate new technologies. In a way, it will alleviate peoples’ suffering by extending affordable surgery services to them,” Sezibera said.

The minister added that the initiative will empower local doctors by improving their capacity to efficiently carry out operations.

"Rwanda is a technology-based country and has infrastructure foundations for several ICT initiatives. We are hoping to move beyond optic fibre and broadband capacity to embrace technology management in hospitals as well as surgery,” He added.

Sheriff commended the government for setting up a backbone that facilitates easy implementation of new technologies.

"Kidney failure all over the world is very expensive and causes poor quality of life for the patients. I’ve been told that Rwanda spends about 25,000 dollars on one patient to have kidney transplants, which is a lot of money for any country,” Sheriff said.

"It’s now a question of getting the team to work together and with some internal and external training, I’m confident that the local experts will be empowered to continue this initiative independently,” Sheriff said.

The minister also mentioned that The MoU has a very short time scale whose demands are expected to be accomplished by the end of this year.

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