Background to the Dartmouth-University of Rwanda Partnership
From 1990-1994, Rwanda’s Civil War, and then brutal Genocide, left a path of destruction that claimed an estimated one million lives. Many physicians and healthcare personnel were among those who perished, and Rwanda was left with only 100 physicians to serve the entire country in 1995. To help address this dire shortage and to build a sustainable healthcare and education system, Rwanda’s Ministry of Health, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and a consortium of top U.S. medical schools including the Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine designed the groundbreaking Human Resources for Health (HRH) program.
Launched in the summer of 2012, the seven-year HRH program improved the quality of education for Rwandan physicians, and continues to help increase the number of doctors, nurses and midwives in Rwanda. Through the program, faculty from Geisel and the other schools committed to long-term stays in Rwanda in order to teach learners at all levels and to partner with Rwandan physicians in creating a strong medical education system.
“The HRH program helped us provide a very good medical education to the health professionals. We have been really fortunate to be working with Dartmouth so that we can improve the quality of healthcare education,” added Nkurikiyimfura.
“The ambitious goal of this program was to build a medical education and health system in Rwanda that will be set the standard for the region,” says Adams. “The scope and potential was unprecedented. This program was also a natural fit for our commitment to global health education and impact at Dartmouth and the work of our Center for Global Health Equity at the medical school.” The founder of this program, Honorable Dr. Agnes Binagwaho,former Minister of Health in Rwanda, is a Geisel faculty member.
The collaboration with partners at the University of Rwanda expanded in 2014 and continues to this day to include bilateral medical student, resident, fellow, and faculty exchanges in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, and Medical Oncology.
The Partnership Today
The Rwanda Society for Endoscopy (RSE) was formed in 2017 with the goals of providing patient care and training providers in endoscopy, promoting sustainability. An important part of accomplishing this mission has been the creation of Rwanda Endoscopy Week (REW), an intensely collaborative week(s) during which gastroenterology faculty from around the world travel to Rwanda to provide high-level care to patients while teaching Rwandan physicians endoscopic skills via both lectures and hands-on training. In 2017, 244 endoscopic procedures were performed during REW. The program has grown annually. During REW in 2022 over 1000 procedures were performed at 7 sites, some of which had never before had endoscopic services.
To further Gastroenterology & Hepatology care in Rwanda, the US non-governmental 501C3 charitable organization GI Rising was formed in 2020 with the mission of furthering GI education and
care in Rwanda through sustainable methods. As part of this mission, GI Rising worked with US teaching hospitals such as Dartmouth Hitchcock as well as the Rwanda Ministry of Health to start a gastroenterology and hepatology fellowship which began in 2022 with 4 fellows who will become faculty as the program grows. These first Rwandan-trained Gastroenterologists are due to graduate in the fall of 2024.
Photos from the March 2025 GI & Oncology Education Trips
Photos by Kelly Burgess. Website: http://kelly-burgess.com
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