KIGALI - Defence Minister, Gen. James Kabarebe, Friday, announced that the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) medical corps "will be expected” to field a level 2 hospital to support peacekeeping operations anywhere in the world by 2012. 

He said this during the inauguration of five new state of the art operating theatres at Kanombe Military Hospital (KMH), the only ones in the country.

Gen. Kabarebe told those present, including Service Chiefs, representatives of Canada-based partners – Operation Eyesight Universal (OEU), KMH Board Members and Management Team and Staff, that the RDF will continue to provide exemplary contributions to nation building as well as the maintenance of international peace and security.

"It is in this context that KMH in particular, and the RDF medical corps in general, will be expected to field a level 2 hospital to support peacekeeping operations anywhere in the world by 2012,” Gen. Kabarebe said.

"The RDF will continue to project national capability at home and abroad as responsible global citizens.”
 KMH is a 43-year old facility offering health care services to the military and the general public. Over 80 percent of its patients are from the general public.

Since 2005, OEU, a Canada-based organization working to see a world free of avoidable blindness, has supported the hospital’s eye unit to eliminate needless blindness in the Eastern Province. 

The Ministry of Defence has provided new strategic guidance to KMH that envisages the hospital becoming a leader in tertiary health care provision, in line with the RDF’s ethos of "being the best in what we do.”

Ends