During the extended National Executive Committee meeting that took place this past weekend, the Minister of Health announced that the government was in advanced stages of setting up a state-of-the-art laboratory.

The laboratory – which will be the biggest of its kind in the country, and probably in the region – will be set up in a 10-storey building whose construction is set to begin near King Faisal Hospital in Kacyiru.

The health minister said that improving the country’s diagnostic capabilities is one of the key lessons learnt from the Coronavirus that has ravaged the country, just like the entire world, for over a year now.

This should go hand in hand with putting effort in developing the best human resource capabilities within the health sector, to be able to produce the requisite workforce for this laboratory and indeed serve Rwandans better in different medical facilities.

This augurs well with one of the resolutions made from the same meeting, which called for effort to position the country in such a way that it taps into the emerging medical tourism that is depleting Africans billions of dollars annually in foreign travel to seek specialised medical services.

Latest statistics indicate that at least $6 billion is spent on medical tourism by Africans who seek treatment beyond the continent, mainly in Asian countries like India.

With traditional sources of forex revenue like tea, coffee and minerals getting a hit either from pandemics like the prevailing Covid-19 or other dynamics on the international market, it is important that Rwandans continue to diversify avenues of increasing foreign exchange.

Medical tourism should start from within. Already as it is, many Rwandans are travelling abroad, India mainly, to seek medical attention for various ailments. Another sizeable number still go to regional countries like Kenya to get the same services.

Besides looking at it from the economic spectrum, from a human standpoint, building such capabilities will go a long way in saving Rwandan lives since not everyone can afford travelling for such specialized treatment.

Having solidified primary healthcare, which is now accessible in all parts of the country and with initiatives like Community Based Health Insurance (Mutuelle de Sante) making sure that at least every Rwandan is able to get medical attention regardless of their economic status, time has come to take this a notch higher, and we are in the right direction.