Dr. Rusingiza’s heart of gold

If you have watched Open Heart, that Rwandan Oscar Awards-nominated documentary, then you have seen Dr. Rusingiza. For the uninitiated, Open Heart is a short documentary that was nominated in the 2013 Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Short Subject category. The 40-minute documentary – whose storyline rotates around eight Rwandan children who leave their families behind to search for treatment and surgery in Sudan – was filmed on three trips between October 2011 and February 2012. They were taken to the only hospital in Africa that performs the operation in Sudan’s Salam Centre, which is run by an Italian nonprofit organisation called Emergency. The documentary was shot while Dr. Rusingiza was going about his daily routine of having to deal with the huge number of children at CHUK – all suffering from heart defects, some of them in critical condition. The eight children were among the many suffering from rheumatic heart diseases and were being treated by Dr. Rusingiza, who altruistically fights to save the lives of his young patients. At the time the documentary was shot, Dr. Rusingiza was handling about 60 cases of children suffering from the rheumatic heart disease. Many of them had months to live, with parents who were pretty much out of options, except for admission to this one distant hospital. One of them was a six-year-old girl (name withheld on request), who had been coming to the hospital every two months since she was two years old. The girl was in critical condition and couldn’t live longer if she hadn’t gotten heart surgery. She was too young and frequently admitted to the hospital. So, it was a major breakthrough when she was selected to go for an operation in Sudan.The doctor is faced with many such cases of young patients with rheumatic heart diseases and it’s often very frustrating for him when he is unable to find a solution for them. Kief Davidson, the director, producer and writer of Open Heart, says of Dr. Rusingiza: “He struck me as an incredible fighter facing insurmountable challenges.” The humble, ever jolly 36-year-old Rusingiza is one of the two pediatric cardiologists in the whole of Rwanda. He also happens to be the only one who works at the public hospital, University Central Hospital of Kigali (CHUK), meaning that he handles most of the heart disease cases among children in Rwanda.However, once in a while, there are visiting teams of surgeons who come to Rwanda to work on such cases. Still, sometimes they are scheduled to come at the time when some of his patients can’t wait for long.But Dr. Rusingiza is optimistic that the documentary will raise awareness about this disease and hopefully, more children will have access to treatment and surgery for rheumatic heart diseases.Right now he has over 50 children on his waiting list, all in need of heart surgery. Through advocacy, at least 15 of them will be going to India for surgery soon. “It’s a quite beautiful but challenging experience for me. It’s nice when we are able to help these children but it is also very sad when I see them lying here in the wards when there is nothing much I can do to help them get surgery,” he says, adding that this disease is common mostly among the poor. Even though some are born with it, he says, others get it from a strep throat or tonsillitis.About Dr. RusingizaDr. Emmanuel Rusingiza graduated in 2003 with a Bachelors degree in Medicine from the National University of Rwanda, Butare, as a general practicing doctor.He practiced at Butare Hospital for one year and in 2005, he specialised in pediatrics at the National University of Rwanda. He later went for a four years’ training in Belgium, were he trained as pediatric cardiologist. He is very passionate about his job and during this interview, he kept on excusing himself to pick phone calls from patients and other medics seeking medical advice on heart diseases.Shortage of pediatric cardiologists in the countryThere are only two pediatric cardiologists in Rwanda; Dr. Rusingiza and Dr. Mucumbitsi of King Faisal Hospital Kigali. But two more doctors will be sent for further studies in India and South Africa to specialise in pediatric cardiology, I was informed. Also, a diploma programme in Cardiology will soon be introduced at the National University of Rwanda with the aim of producing more cardiologists in the country. Once the programme is introduced, Dr. Rusingiza will be one of the teachers passing on skills to other doctors who want to specialise in pediatric cardiology.