Kigali, 26 June 2013
President Kagame today received Dr. Mike O’neal, current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Mercy Hospitals, who is leading a delegation of 27 people that is in Rwanda to assess possible cooperation between Mercy Hospital and four leading Rwandan hospitals.
Through the Kigali City – Oklahoma City Sister City Relationship, Mercy Hospitals expressed their interest in the Rwanda health care and proposed to send exploratory teams to four hospitals in Kigali City.
After the meeting with President Kagame, Jim Gebhart Fache, 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. 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 built overall we are headed in the right direction.”
Mercy Hospital has been liaising with the City of Kigali and the management of the Rwanda Military Hospital, Kacyiru Police hospital, Kibagabaga Hospital and Muhima Hospital to map a forum for further discussions during their visit in line with the expertise of Mercy Hospital.
The Minister of Health, Agnes Binagwaho said:
“The group is here to assess how they can help improve our hospitals building on what we are doing. 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.”
The visit is aimed at conducting an assessment and evaluation at the four hospitals to determine what value Mercy Hospital 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 Hospital and Rwanda hospitals will be in areas of capacity building development, Infrastructure development, Medical equipment, Research, E-health: IT based Patient record system & archiving, Emergency focusing on brain injury management, Hospital Networking focusing on hospital leadership and management