Dr-Martin_07 Rwanda 2017 Audio Transcript

Dr. Rebecca Martin, Presenter:  First as I said for the question you asked me about the priority areas going forward is really the political commitment. It’s from the president down to the community where you see the ability in Rwanda for when an effort is taken that there is incredible commitment and there are the tools and necessary resources put in place to enact the change. It’s not just a commitment in words only but does also involve the resources required. I would also say Rwanda’s ability to reach their population and many say that Rwanda is unique this way but I think the program has shown that through their health workers, through there outreach workers, that they can reach everybody they need to reach with the interventions. They use continuous quality improvement measures to make sure that they are constantly revising and necessarily innovating on their areas. And the third I would mention is the blood bank. I think this is an area where beyond getting to a point moved it to make sure they were accredited, they then went on to win an award. It shows you the importance of being able to innovate, to make sure that protecting their people and the population is critical and I think this is something others can learn. The most exciting thing now is the use of the drones to be able to transport blood to areas that are hard to reach and to provide it to the health facilities and hospitals and this is something I think that many countries are very interested, whether this is viable to use drones. There is a lot of controversy about the use of them but then to see them used in such a way is really innovative to make sure that live saving products are given to people in need.

https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/countries/rwanda/mp3/Dr-Martin_07__NR.MP3