Category: Health

Kigali City Mayor Fidele Ndayisaba has said that dirt is now a taboo in the city and urged city dwellers to ensure the city is kept tidy all time.

Ndayisaba announced this on Wednesday 15th February 2012 while launching the Hygiene Month at Nyamirambo Regional stadium.

The Kigali city authority delegation lead by vice-mayors in charge of hygiene from three districts of the city visited hospitals and hotels within Gasabo district.

Hope Tumukunde, Kigali city vice-mayor in charge of social affairs said that they will use this month to visit all the institutions to encourage proper hygiene.

She said,“this month is for visits but after we shall go back to the visited institutions where we shall punish offenders.” She added that hygiene should become part of Rwandan culture and teach it to young children.

On 28th December 2012 the Health Ministry statistics showed that 80% of the treated diseases in Rwanda are from lack of hygiene.

Kibagabaga Hospital authorities in collaboration with Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC) have announced plans to expand the hospital in order to improve their service delivery to the customers.

Dr. Christian Ntizimira, the head of the hospital, told IGIHE.com that all the problems are due to the unexpected big number of patients they treat.

He said, “Normally, Kibagabaga Hospital is supposed to receive 200 patients but nowadays the number has increased to almost three times.”

He added that the big number of patients they treat is due to the fact that Gasabo district is resided by 50% of the Kigali city population as a whole.

Dr. Christian Ntizimira together with Dr. Blaise Uhagaze, the head of BTC in Rwanda said that, in the expansion, they expect to build a house with many floors.

This comes after an excessive number of patients appear in the hospital compound as well as in sick rooms.

In toilets, there is a terribly bad smell as IGIHE.com noticed when it was visiting the hospital on Wednesday, the 15th February 2012.

Kibagabaga Hospital is located in Kimironko sector Gasabo district and is mostly attended by a big number of patients because of their appreciated service delivery.

Rwanda loses RWF32 billion annually due to poor sanitation. This revelation is contained in a study conducted by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) on the ‘Economic Impact of Poor sanitation in Africa’.

It’s approximated that 7,200 Rwandans including 6,100 children under 5, die each year from diarrhoea nearly 90% of which is directly attributed to poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).

The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project aims at increasing availability of water supply, and sanitation services in rural areas in Rwanda.

Poor sanitation costs Rwanda 32 billion Rwandan Francs each year, equivalent to US$54 million, according to a desk study carried out by the Water and Sanitation Program. This sum is the equivalent of US$5 per person in Rwanda per year or 0.9% of the national GDP.

The study shows that only 4.6 million Rwandese use unsanitary or shared latrines and 0.3 million have no latrine at all and defecate in the open. Also the poorest quintile is 3 times more likely to practice open defection than the richest.

Open defecation costs Rwanda US$3.9 million per year – yet eliminating the practice would require less than 70,000 latrines to be built and used. US$0.8 million lost each year in Access Time:

It is also indicated in the study that each person practicing open defecation spends almost 2.5 days a year finding a private location to defecate leading to large economic losses.

This cost falls disproportionately on women as caregivers that may spend additional time accompanying young children the sick or elderly relatives. This cost is likely to be an underestimation as those without toilets, particularly women, will be obliged to find a private location for urination as well.

The study further reveals that US$51 million is lost each year due to Premature Death.

In addition poor sanitation is a contributing factor through its impact on malnutrition rates to other leading causes of child mortality including malaria, ALRI and measles.

The WSP study indicates that US$0.2 million is lost each year due to Productivity Losses whilst sick or accessing healthcare. This includes time absent from work or school due to diarrheal disease, seeking treatment from a health clinic or hospital, and time spent caring for children under 5years suffering from diarrhoea or other sanitation-attributable diseases.

Also US$1.9 million is spent each year on Health Care. Costs associated with health seeking behaviour include consultation, medication, transport and in some cases hospitalization that burden households and government spending.

Diarrheal diseases directly, and indirectly via malnutrition (and its consequences for other diseases such as respiratory infections and malaria) are all leading causes of morbidity.

Costs of poor sanitation are inequitably distributed with the highest economic burden falling disproportionately on the poorest.

The average cost associated with poor sanitation, constitutes a much greater proportion of a poor person’s income than that of a wealthier person. Access to sanitation alone demonstrates inequities; the poorest 20% of the population are 3 times more likely to practice open defecation than the wealthiest 20% of the population.

Therefore for the poorest, poverty is a double-edged sword – not only are they more likely to have poor sanitation but they have to pay proportionately more for the negative effects it has.

In efforts to resolve problems identified by Water and Sanitation Program, it is recommended to allocate higher investments to Sanitation, address bottlenecks in the service delivery pathway, Target investments to the poorest and elimination of open defecation.

Patients admitted at Kabgayi hospital aren’t contented with the service rendered to them at the hospital. This was revealed during commemoration of a global patient day at Kabgayi hospital.

Among the patients noted that the physiotherapy department hasn’t been operating for the past week. “Some of us don’t have wheel chairs for instance.”

However, Osée Sebatunzi, the director of Kabgayi hospital refuted the claims adding that services at the hospital had improved especially with the introduction of suggestion boxes.

“I personally make surprise visits to patients and ask them about their welfare and how they think about services provided to them,” he said.

Kabgayi hospital receives over 400 patients daily.it consists of a staff of 106 nurses and 16 physicians.

With over 16,000 families in Rwanda affected by malnutrition, the government has set strategies to eliminate malnutrition in a period of six months.

Medical experts say it takes at least 28 days for a malnourished child to regain his health.

The world has 143 million children under the age of five that are underweight due to malnutrition. One quarter of these live in Africa.

The biggest numbers of victims of malnutrition today are mostly women breast feeding, pregnant and children under the age of five.

Malnutrition is commonly among people suffering from mental retardation, low mortality rates of women in maternity and people having difficulties treating diseases such as HIV and Malaria.

The Prime Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi launched the national anti malnutrition campaign by distributing milk to children on the 29th January 2012.

Government officials argue that the problem in Rwanda is not the lack of food but the lack of proper distribution. Rural Rwandans have not grasped the knowledge of how they can live healthy through a well balanced diet.

Arthur Asiimwe, The director-general in charge of communication at the Rwanda Biomedical Center told IGIHE.com that the plan will involve regular procurement of nutrition commodities and identification of undernourished women both pregnant and breast feeding and all children under the age of five.

The “Akarima K’Igikoni” which is an established vegetable garden will be promoted as well as the provision of cows to households with extreme malnourished children in districts that have the highest level of malnutrition.

“Organized trained staff will go to different rural areas where women will be taught how to cook healthy meals with foods such as sweet potatoes, soya, groundnuts, mushrooms, and other micronutrient foods making a balanced diet needed and we will also teach people poultry farming.”

“Adequate nutrition and food are essential for the physical, mental and emotional development of children as well as adults for food is a universal right” said Asiimwe.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health Dr Uzziel Ndagijimana recently told press that malnutrition is still a big problem to the development of the country. “The country is progressing in various domains but malnutrition is still a serious challenge.”

The concept has roots in Buddhist teachings. Just as there are forms of meditation that involve sitting, breathing, standing and walking, many Buddhist teachers encourage their students to meditate with food, expanding consciousness by paying close attention to the sensation and purpose of each morsel.

Continue this way throughout the course of a meal, and you’ll experience the third-eye-opening pleasures of a practice known as mindful eating. It really doesn’t matter what the food is, but make it something you love let’s just say it’s that first nibble from your favorite, hot, fragrant dish.

With most people shoving the food in their mouths even before it’s put down, this is where the hard part comes.Put the fork DOWN! For most people who have had the first bite, the second is inevitable, and we all know what happens after that.

The point of this exercise is to get people, especially children to masticate their food properly. Not only is this healthy, relieve stress and sheds many of the neuroses that we’ve come to associate with food, but it is also about experiencing food more intensely, especially the pleasure of it.

The last few years have brought a stack of books, blogs and videos about hyper-conscious eating. Which many also call mindful eating, which is passionately encouraging corporations and health care providers to try it and such experiments of the mouth and mind have begun to seep into universities across the globe.

In Rwanda in many homes eating is more of a necessity than an enjoyment; people are forced to swallow the foods whole due to lack of time or space in restaurants. School children are forced to eat quickly so then can have time to play before recess has ended. Meals have become and an all eating and no thinking.

Dr. Jan Chozen Bays, a pediatrician and meditation teacher in Oregon and the author of Mindful Eating: A guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food says “I think the fundamental problem is that we go unconscious when we eat.”

Life is becoming faster and faster, and so is everything we do, our awareness and ability to check ourselves has become something the doctors are doing, but what of our selves. Are we not to stop and ask yourself if what your eating is healthy, well cooked, or simply food for comfort? Which is how many of our children are increasing in the obesity levels.

The question shouldn’t be what the foods to eat are, in your mind but what is on your mind when you’re eating.

The point of the exercise is simply to eat, as opposed to eating and talking, eating and watching TV, or eating and watching TV and gossiping on the phone while tweeting and updating one’s Face book status, instead for 10 or 20 minutes you hold musing on, holding and patiently masticating, in keeping with a key principle of mindful eating.

Self-help gurus like Oprah Winfrey have become cheerleaders of this eating exercise, where a whole hour is dedicated to masticating, enjoying and holding the tastes of the foods they eat.

So should you be eating while reading this article please, don’t stop reading, finish reading and with all the food for thought we have given you, switch off your phone, log off your facebook page, wish whomever you are eating with “Bon Appétit” and then take your food seriously.

Three restaurants have been closed down due to poor hygiene in their kitchens.

A delegation comprising of officials from Ministry of Health, National Police and City council surveyed restaurants and hotels around the city assessing whether they were operating under standard health requirements.

During the survey three restaurants including; Virunga restaurant at the MTN complex, Dolphin, and Car wash were shut down.

It was established during the survey that restaurants which seemed clean and chic on the outside were actually unclean inside.

Alphonsine Mukamunana of the ministry of health led the delegation conduting the survey to inspect various restaurants and their employees.

Dolphin restaurant was closed down, Fabrice Niyongere promised to try and keep his kitchen clean and up to standards.

The ministry of health is expected to meet all restaurants and hotel owners to discuss issues concerning the precautions and rules to be followed by all restaurants subject to the existing laws.

A visiting group of American doctors are in the country to treat some patients at King Faisal Hospital. The doctors will visit several patients in different wards where they will be updated on the patients diagnosis.

Those found with serious cases may be sponsored to receive treatment abroad if such cases cannot be handled in Rwanda due to the difficulty of the procedures.

The doctors found constantly roaming the halls of the hospitals with warm smiles on their faces are seen talking to patients as the doctors go through their daily routines and checkups.

The doctors are in the country for a few days where each day is spent visiting and determining the seriousness of medical conditions of patients.

After the medical board examines all recent cases of all patients diagnosed visited, the decision will be left to the chairman of the medical referral board that will then start patient transfer proceedings from King Faisal hospital to requested hospitals.

However, patients being sponsored by Rwandan government will not be eligible for treatment abroad– Patients such as those being sponsored by FARG.

The American Doctors are accompanied by a group of photographers.

The Prime Minister Pierre Damien Habumuremyi has cautioned doctors over poor service delivery and customer care citing poor dressing code,bad language, negative attitude at work and general poor management as the major vices that need to be urgently rectified within the Health sector.

In a one day meeting that took place at Lemigo Hotel this Friday, Habumuremyi said that the Health sector is sensitive where proper service delivery and customer care must be paramount.

While Doctors looked on quietly in disbelief, the Prime Minister introduced the matter that they had been called for, only to find that it was their poor way of service to innocent and vulnerable citizens.

“Your domain is very sensitive that even the smallest issue can destabilize all citizens and affect other sectors. All health facilities should be where citizens should go and get hope of healing,” Habumuremyi said.

Habumurenyi said that the Doctors’ code of ethics is now at stake due to continued poor services saying that he has received accumulated messages from citizens complaining about poor treatment from doctors including sexual harassment.

“We know you have lots of challenges, dealing with people from those remote areas is not easy despite lack of some facilities. One health center we visited did not have water but it is among the best health centers offering good services,” Habumuremyi said.

“Being unable to have necessary requirements does not permit let say poor hygiene. You can be poor but you can be listed among the most hygienic persons in the community,” Habumurenyi cautioned.

He said proper service delivery and customer care are national interests where all sectors are requested to improve.

Habumurenyi said he had previously toured and talked with professionals from banking sector and Hotels to see how best it can be achieved.

Habumuremyi said that some doctors and nurses have poor attitude at work as well as poor dressing codes where he highlighted King Faisal Hospital a major referral Hospital in the country.

“I met one specialist at King Faisal Hospital wearing Jeans and a casual shirt and snickers, such a dressing code is unacceptable remember you are role model in the society, that puts a threat on your reputation,”He said.

Referring to Rwanda Development Board current survey on service delivery, prime minister said that it was indicated that among four tourists that come in Rwanda only one admit that s/he has recieved good services.

Habumuremyi implored the heads of District hospitals in the country and other relevant medical practitioners to come up with a checklist of standards that will hike service delivery and customer care in the medical fraternity.

The Prime Minister was lauded by Health Minister Dr. Agnes Binagwaho while saying that the problem is not that it so much alarming in the health sector, it is rather the same or even less but in health sector people needing services are very vulnerable.

“We have a national corporate campaign aimed at improving service delivery and customer care to improve the country’s image across all sectors, it is not only in health sector,” Binagwaho said.

“Doctors and nurses are using poor language when attending to patients. Even in our five star accredited hospital King Faisal they have poor language while attending to patients, even delays and we have cases where some people have opted for medical services out of the country, thats money taken away so our hospitals cannot grow,” Binagwaho added.

Binagwaho said that the solution must come from personnel in the sector adding that even though some challenges are beyond their capabilities.

In the recent grenade attacks ambulances on University Hospital CHUK and Kibagabaga District hospital lacked a driver which is one of the sign of poor management that results into poor service delivery and customer care.

ENDS

Global efforts to eliminate malaria are highly unlikely by the UN target date of 2015 following new research based on modern techniques that has revealed that Malaria actually kills twice as previously assumed for thirty years.

The new figure shows that malaria kills 1.2million people annually including babies,older children and adults. This research disqualifies an assumption in data held for 30years about the world’s deadly diseases.

In Africa the contribution of malaria to children’s deaths is higher than had been thought, causing 24% of their deaths in 2008 and not 16% as found by a report by Black and colleagues, whose methodology was used in the World Malaria Report.

The findings from the research have been published today (Friday) reanalysing 30 years of data on Malaria using new techniques.

Children die most. However, a fifth are among those aged 15. 49, 9% are among 50- to 69-year-olds. 6% are in people over 70. A third of all deaths are in adults. In countries outside sub-Saharan Africa, more than 40% of deaths were in adults.

This research also raises urgent questions about the future of the troubled Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, which has provided the money for most of the tools to combat the disease in Africa, such as insecticide-impregnated bed nets and new drugs. The fund is in financial crisis and has had to cancel its next grant-making round.

According to the guardian of UK, the esearch comes from the highly respected Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), based in Seattle, and is published in the Lancet medical journal.

Dr Christopher Murray and colleagues have systematically collected data on deaths from all over the world over a 30-year period, from 1980 to 2010, using new methodologies and inventive ways of measuring mortality in countries where deaths are not conventionally recorded.

The work on malaria is part of a much bigger project which has already led to new estimates of the death rates of women in childbirth and pregnancy and from breast and cervical cancer.

Their figure of 1.2 million deaths for 2010 is nearly double the 655,000 estimated in last year’s World Malaria Report.

The good news is that they have confirmed the downward trend that the World Health Organisation’s report showed, as a result of efforts by donors, aid organisations and governments to tackle the disease.

The bad news is that the decline comes from a much higher peak – deaths hit 1.8 million in 2004, they say. That means the interventions such as better treatment and bed nets are working, but there is much further to go than everybody had assumed.

The study demolishes conventional thinking on malaria – that almost all the deaths are in babies and small children under the age of five. The study found that 42% were in older children and adults.

“You learn in medical school that people exposed to malaria as children develop immunity and rarely die from malaria as adults,” said Murray, IHME director and the study’s lead author. “What we have found in hospital records, death records, surveys and other sources shows that just is not the case.”