Rwanda: Oklahoma Hospitals to Cooperate With Rwandan Health Ministry

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A team of 27 people from the City of Oklahoma – Mercy Hospitals – is in the country to assess possible cooperation between the Hospital and four leading Rwandan hospitals.
President Paul Kagame on Wednesday received Dr. Mike O’neal, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Mercy Hospitals, who is leading the delegation to Rwanda at Urugwiro village.
According to the Minister of Health Agnes Binagwaho, Mercy Hospitals expressed their interest in Rwanda’s health care and proposed to send exploratory teams to four hospitals in Kigali City.
The Hospitals are; the Kanombe Military Hospital, Kacyiru Police hospital, Kibagabaga Hospital and Muhima Hospital.
After meeting the President, Jim Gebhart Fache, the President of Mercy Hospital said:
“We hope to work with the Rwanda Ministry of Health so we can coordinate better for equity all over Rwanda to improve healthcare,” said Fache.
He said that the emphasis is on clinical and management improvement in hospitals.
“There are things that we have learnt from the hospitals in Rwanda and there are also areas that could use our advice,we are headed in the right direction,” Fache added.
Mercy Hospital has been liaising with the City of Kigali and the management of Rwanda to map a forum for further discussions during their visit in line with the expertise of Mercy Hospital.
“On the team are medial doctors, registered nurses and hospital administrators. We have ideas and we also let them make their own assessment and tell us what we can do better,”said Minister of Health, Agnes Binagwaho.
The Mercy Hospitals Staff’s visit is aimed at conducting an assessment and evaluation at the four hospitals to determine what value they could offer in health care for Rwanda so that upon their return to the US, the team, together with their counterparts can work on an action plan of how best the generated ideas would be implemented.
Likely areas of cooperation between Mercy Hospitals and Rwanda hospitals will be in areas of capacity building development, Infrastructure development, Medical equipment, Research, E-health.
Other areas are; IT based Patient record system & archiving, Emergency focusing on brain injury management, Hospital Networking focusing on hospital leadership and management.