IntraHealth And Partners Launch Twubakane Project In Rwanda
3 May, 2005
A ceremony held on March 3 in Kigali celebrated the official start-up of the Twubakane Decentralization and Health Project, a five-year, $24 million initiative to increase the use of community health services in Rwanda. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded the project to IntraHealth International in January.
Twubakane means "let's build together" in the Kinyarwanda language, and the project's vision is to implement a more effective and efficient system of governance in Rwanda with enhanced capacity for decentralized health care. IntraHealth's primary partners in the project are RTI International and Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development and Technology Transfer.
The Twubakane project is led by Laura Hoemeke, formerly IntraHealth's regional director for West and Central Africa. "Our vision for this project is that it has a significant impact on reducing the tragically high rates of child and maternal mortality in Rwanda. We hope that the project not only helps build strong, sustainable systems—but also saves lives, with rapid and visible impact," Hoemeke said after the start-up meeting.
In addition to strengthening community-based services in family planning and reproductive health, child survival, malaria and nutrition, the Twubakane Project focuses on financial management, anti-corruption and local participatory governance. The project will work in four provinces—Kigali-Ville, Kibungo, Gitarama and Gikongoro—home to a third of the country’s population of 8.3 million.
The start-up workshop was attended by approximately 150 participants—including the Minister of Health, the Minister of Local Governance, the American Chargé d'Affaires, the USAID Mission Director and other USAID representatives and IntraHealth's President Pape Gaye.
Other participants included governors, mayors, members of civil society organizations, representatives of donor agencies and international and local NGOs and the media. Following presentations by USAID and by the Twubakane project team, an interactive question-and-answer session took place, during which participants shared their enthusiasm and interest in the project, and asked questions about implementation and collaboration.
One governor, expressing his excitement about the new project, said he looks forward to bringing together health and decentralization in his province. "To be real, decentralization needs to focus on something real in people's lives—and health is a great example. This assistance comes at the right time," he said.
Since the start-up workshop, the Twubakane project team has been recruiting and hiring staff, finalizing plans for provincial level offices and preparing participatory planning workshops at the provincial and national levels to finalize the project strategy and workplans.
From its offices in Kigali, IntraHealth also continues its work to improve HIV/AIDS services with funding from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. IntraHealth's ongoing activities for AIDS relief in Rwanda include supporting prevention of mother-to-child transmission efforts, integrating HIV/AIDS and family planning services, developing human resources and supporting improvements to the HIV/AIDS curriculum and teaching in the country's nursing schools.
IntraHealth has been active in Rwanda for nearly two decades, assisting the Government of Rwanda and the Ministry of Health through USAID-funded projects designed to respond to the country's tremendous need for high-quality family planning, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services. Carried out in the context of Rwanda's recovery from civil war and genocide, this assistance included help in developing the country's first national reproductive health policy, which became the official policy document in July 2003.