By Ceeya Patton-Bolman | Director
Rwanda makes much-needed changes in leadership to provide a center to house specialty cardiac care during our most recent trip. As the death rates decrease for TB and malaria, NCD diseases are on the rise. As physicians and nurses increase skills for diagnosis, there is an increasing backlog of patients needing intervention.
Follow the story of Rachel. Rachel was diagnosed during pregnancy. Her heart failure made it difficult to take care of her chores in the family home where her husband took her. He resented her slowness as she carefully walked to fetch water.
However, Rachel was screened 3 times before she was accepted as a candidate for surgery. Each time her echo came up for review, everyone agreed she would do well with surgery, but there were others too sick, who would not survive another year. And during her echo screening in 2016, she was so hopeful, because now she was one of the acutely ill patients. She felt there was a reason she had survived when so many others had not.
You cannot do cardiac surgery in substandard facilities. And Rwanda is a country still struggling to recover from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. As health care rebuilds, there are many competing priorities--all important. But there are many patients our there like Rachel, and with some help, they can have their surgery, return to health and be part of the efforts to make a difference.
Rachel did not give up, so neither can we.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=55&v=3aBJF8-xC5E
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
