A patients' hall at Butaro hospital: a cancer referral center will soon open there
The Government of Rwanda in corporation with international health partners will mid this month inaugurate the first ever cancer referral center in Rural Rwanda.
The Center is located within Butaro Hospital in northern rural Rwanda. It is a critical element of Rwanda's ambitious five-year plan to introduce cancer prevention, screening and treatment on a national level.
The facility's opening will mark a major milestone as the first center of its kind to bring comprehensive cancer care to rural East Africa.
The international partners include; NASCAR's Jeff Gordon, Partners In Health's Paul Farmer, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Larry Shulman.
"Just a few years ago we had no system or financing mechanism to diagnose and treat AIDS in Africa. People said it was too expensive or too complicated. But today nearly 7 million people in developing countries are receiving treatment for HIV.
We can do the same with cancer," said Paul Farmer, co-founder Partners In Health and chair of Harvard's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine in a statement by the Ministry of health.
Rwanda has a population of about 11 million people and there is no single Rwandan oncologist. Childhood cancers like acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which has an 80 percent cure rate in the United States, are a virtual death sentence for children in Rwanda.
"As Rwanda makes significant strides in combating major infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB and killer diseases like Malaria, the government is also putting a lot of effort into the diagnosis and treatment of the most frequently occurring non-communicable diseases (NCDs)," says the statement.
According to the Ministry, the new Butaro Cancer Centre of Excellence not only comes at an appropriate time, but also feeds well into this vision and adds value to the interventions that have designed in combating NCDs.
"We appreciate the role of our partners in making this dream of screening, diagnosing, and treating some cancers become a reality in our country," said Dr. Agnes Binagwaho.
The Cancer Center of Excellence aims to address both existing resource limitations and the growing global cancer burden. The World Health Organization expects 16 million new cancer cases worldwide by 2020, with 70 percent in developing countries like Rwanda.
The Butaro Cancer Center of Excellence is expected to provide a full spectrum of cancer care including screening, diagnosis, chemotherapy, surgery, patient follow-up, and palliative care.
It will also serve as the first facility to implement standardized cancer training and protocols that align with Rwanda's new national guidelines.
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