Rwanda
Population (2017): 12.21 M
Income Per Capita (2018): 765.20 US
Percentage of GDP on Healthcare: 7.90
TRAINING
The year family medicine established: 2008-2010
Type of Training: Postgraduate family and community medicine (FAMCO) training programme. It was known as a third cycle masters program.
Length of Training:
o Medical School – 6 years.
o Work as General Practitioner – 2 years.
o Family Residence Training – 4 years.
Number of institutions that offer family medicine: Only one, The National University of Rwanda – now known as University of Rwanda.
Number of family medicine residents graduating each year: 5 graduated in the first cohort, and then 4 graduated in the second cohort.
PRACTICE
Number of family doctors in a country (2018): 9
Physician to population ratio (2015): 6.4 physicians per 100,000 inhabitants.
DALY: 59,702 per 100,000 individuals (Due to all Causes).
Life Expectancy:
Females 2017: 69.6 years
Males 2017: 65.3 years
Mortality rate 2017:
2017 Males: 219 per 1,000 male adults.
2017 Females: 165 per 1,000 female adults.
Infant Immunization-HepB3: % of 1-year-old children received: 97%
College of Family Physicians (Y or N):
NO
Healthcare system
The healthcare system is mixed, but mostly public, with recent emerging private sectors. Family medicine is not recognized in the healthcare industry anymore due to changes in the national ministry of health in Rwanda. There are 1,671 physicians in the public and private sector.
Training
Family medicine planning in Rwanda began in 2006. Due to the changes at the ministry of health level the program only lasted from 2008-2011. There are only 9 family medicine physicians in the country. However, Rwanda is in the process of establishing the Rwanda Family Medicine Association, in order to signify the importance of family medicine in the country, and to re-establish it.
practice
Primary care consists of nurses and lay people. Lay people are those selected from the community. Their role is to diagnose childhood diseases, and promote use of contraception. The objective of training family physicians was to train individuals capable of providing comprehensive, continuous health care of good quality, which is person centred, family oriented and community based, using the bio-psychosocial model of care at the district level. Gatekeeping does not exist in Rwanda. Those who are in private clinics are directly seeing patients coming from home. The family medicine doctors can treat them or decide to refer them to a hospital. Family doctors see a very small percentage of primary care issues. The model of primary care used is a Vertical Disease Oriented Model.