Rwanda To Get $10M Cardiac Care Facility

Doctors under Team Heart presenting their plan to build a heart treatment centre in Kigali, March 6th

Team Heart – a non-profit medical organization based in the United States have announced plans to build a cardiac care centre in Rwanda that would reduce the cost of heart treatment abroad by 50%.

Several Rwandans have been going abroad for heart surgery or other heart-related treatment, hence spending millions of francs.

For instance, a patient seeking heart treatment abroad spends over $5000 or Rwf4.3 million, minimum.

With the new $10 million cardiac care hospital coming to Rwanda, Team heart doctors, currently on a tour of service in the country, say the cost could be significantly reduced.

Team Heart is made of nurses and surgeons who focus on bringing sustainable cardiac care in Rwanda.

For the past 11 years, the team has been coming to Rwanda to offer heart surgery services through collaboration with the Ministry of Health and King Faisal Hospital.

But this time, they are here to stay. “We appreciate the government of Rwanda that has donated land where this hospital will be built in two years from now,” Prof. Ceeya Patton Bolman – co-founder and director of Team heart Cardiac Surgery organization told KT Press this morning at King Faisal Hospital.

The new Cardiac care facility will be constructed in Masaka sector, Kicukiro district in the capital Kigali.

Bolman says that once the Centre is complete, it will offer diagnosis, treatment of heart diseases and follow up on heart patients who will be treated at the facility.

Dr. Nathan Ruhamya – a senior cardiologist at King Faisal Hospital told KT Press that 164 patients have been operated on since 2007 by Team Heart.

This year, they treated 16 patients within barely one week.

According to Ruhamya, Rwanda has only 6 cardiologists who do not fully meet increasing number of patients.