Editor,

It’s with pleasant surprise that I found out a total of 16 heart patients had successfully undergone surgery and are steadily recovering at King Faisal Hospital in Kacyiru.

The successful operations were undertaken by a team of 46 voluntary heart specialists that included volunteer doctors, nurses and medical specialists from the United States.

The best part of the program was the fact that despite the operations carried out being rare and expensive, the team carried out the surgeries voluntarily and at no cost.

And in addition, these operations were done in cooperation with Rwandan cardiologists. So, instead of just treating the patients that couldn’t get that kind of treatment in Rwanda, the American experts gave their Rwandan counterparts a chance to learn the same techniques.

Like the Chinese say, "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, however, if you teach a man to fish, he’ll feed himself for a lifetime”.

Remera