Rwanda has way more than one surgeon!

Reference is made to an article that ran in The Daily Monitor of 3rd October 2013 under the headline, “Rwanda has only one surgeon for 11 million people”.I would like to commend the media for their role in raising key issues that affect the population but in the case of this article, the writer gave the wrong impression of Rwanda’s health sector as far as the number of medical personnel is concerned.I would like to set the record straight on the “facts” given in this article by stating that from an estimated 30 doctors in the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, today, Rwanda has more than 171 medical specialists including 37 surgeons, and 30 surgeons currently undergoing training, a big number of the surgeons on training are from the Central University Hospital of Kigali (CHUK). The specialists are distributed in referral hospitals and district hospitals. Healthcare services are always delivered to the best of the personnel’s moral and professional standards. I wish to point out that the Government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Health has created different partnerships, which from time to time provide support to building the necessary health workforce to create a high quality, sustainable healthcare system. On many an occasion, we receive different visiting teams of specialists, a case in point being the recent visiting team from India and Nigeria in partnership with Rotary Club who are offering free plastic surgery to survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.In addition, Rwanda’s efforts to bridge the geographical access gap to quality health care have paid off. We have five referral hospitals, 42 district hospitals and 470 health centres, and all these have ensured that 60 percent of Rwandans live within 5 km of a health facility and 85 percent live within 10 km. This implies that even patients that need specialised treatment or care can easily access the services. While our country has registered a lot of progress in the health sector over the past 10 years, efforts continue to ensure universal access to quality health care for all Rwandans and this is a process that will not be completed overnight. Over 90 percent of the population can acquire health care especially with the current medical insurance system in place.The most recent Rwandan innovation is the introduction, of the “Human Resources for Health” (HRH) that was introduced last year. CHUK, the teaching hospital where I have worked since 1994 increased the quality of care in collaboration with many partners but the benefit from HRH programme is highly appreciated in terms of increasing the of number of students in post graduate programme and clinical activities.The HRH Programme is a partnership with the US government allowing bringing 100 US Faculty members for a year, in Rwanda at no cost for Rwanda. These very highly experienced health professionals and academicians fill clinical gaps and help the faculty to improve its teaching capacity and support Rwanda to produce a bigger number of qualified medical doctors and specialists. With this programme we will train 500 specialists and 5000 nurses before 2018. We can also add more 50 Rwandan residents in specialisation programme outside the country. This will dramatically increase our populations’ access to qualified, and skilled-level Rwandan clinicians. It also will help our medical students and residents to be educated by more skilled Rwandan educators, in health sciences - medical nursing, midwifery, and oral health.The HRH programme and other home grown solutions are among some of the actions taken by the government to improve the life of Rwandans. The fruits of such endeavours are already yielding results with life expectancy having doubled. The article gets it right, that there is a lot to do in our journey to developing the health sector but does not give the correct figures of our health personnel or current status of general access to quality health care for our citizens. The writer is the Director of the Central University Hospital of Kigali (CHUK)