On Aug. 5 the Ministry of Health of Rwanda welcomed former President Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea to the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Program.
The HRH Program, launched in July 2012 by His Excellency President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Clinton, is celebrating completion of its first year and the beginning of its second year.
The program operates through an innovative model designed to address critical gaps in the quantity and quality of health professionals in Rwanda.
Each year the program deploys nearly 100 faculty—doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and global health management experts—for one-year periods, to “twin,” or partner with Rwandan colleagues.
Faculty mentor and support Rwandan colleagues in the areas of curriculum development, didactic teaching, clinical teaching and management and administration.
In the first year of the program, 91 faculty from U.S. institutions, including Harvard Medical School and its affiliates, partnered with 90 Rwandan colleagues at four referral hospitals, seven district hospitals and eight schools of medicine, nursing and midwifery, and public health.
Clinton and his daughter were received at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK), one of the referral hospitals supported by the HRH Program. The tour began with an opportunity to view some of the bedside clinical co-teaching that has been the mainstay of the HRH Program.
Emmanuel Rusingiza from the faculty of medicine at the National University of Rwanda and his counterpart/twin Mark Corden, HMS instructor in pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, were co-teaching residents in the Pediatrics Department.
Also at CHUK, Marie Jeanne Tuyisenge, from the Rwanda School of Nursing and Midwifery and Kathryn Schaivone, from the University of Maryland, demonstrated neonatal resuscitation techniques to students of nursing and midwifery using simulation methods.
A similar didactic teaching exercise was performed by Georges Ntakiyiruta, of the faculty of medicine at the National University of Rwanda, and Jennifer Kreshak, HMS instructor in surgery and courtesy surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to demonstrate surgical techniques to medical students and residents.
The tour concluded with a private meeting between Clinton and some of the faculty pairs—Rwandan faculty and their twins from U.S. institutions—who participated in the first year of the program.
The $152 million program is also challenging the international aid paradigm through a funding model that promotes country ownership and greater efficiency in bilateral aid through a low overhead cost model.
U.S. government money, in addition to support from the Global Fund, is channeled directly to the government of Rwanda, which financially manages the program.
The HRH is an academic consortium of U.S. universities that are collaborating with the Rwandan Ministry of Health to support Rwanda’s growing medical and educational capacity and to help establish a world-class, self-sustaining national health care system there.
As part of the consortium, HMS and Brigham and Women’s Hospital recently finalized a joint memorandum of understanding with the government of Rwanda.
Adapted from a Human Resources for Health Program news release.
