The Ministry of Health has announced that they are working vigorously to increase, by at least four times, the number of medical workers – doctors, nurses, midwives – in Rwanda’s healthcare system in the next four years.

The move is geared towards addressing the acute shortage of healthcare professionals in the country, where statistics show that there is one nurse for every 1200 patients. The shortage is even more dire when it comes to medical doctors, which is over 8,000 patients for every one doctor.

Rwanda has made significant strides in ensuring every citizen is able to access medical care and that is mainly backed by the Community Based Health Insurance, commonly known as Mutuelle de Sante, to which over 11 million Rwandans are subscribed.

Other households from the working class have premiums in other insurance schemes, which makes over 90 per cent of the population insured with at least one policy.

While this is a good problem to have, it inevitably exerts more pressure on the few medical personnel at health facilities and this affects the quality of service they offer.

The workload in health facilities can equally be held responsible for the high turnover of practitioners especially in public health facilities which complicates an already complicated situation.

The shortage of medical personnel also implies that those that are practicing do not have time to do the much-needed research to improve on their knowledge and this has a direct implication to the services they offer to Rwandans.

The move by the government to increase by at least four times the current workforce in the medical sector will invariably come with many advantages to our health sector.

However, it is important to note that while the projected numbers offer a sigh of relief, quality must be paramount.

For instance, an official from the Ministry of Health said that they intend to hit this target by increasing the number of students who graduate in medicine, nursing courses, and midwives courses from 2,000 to 8,000 every year.

This is granted. However, it has been a general trend that even among those who graduate, some of the best among them end up not practicing medicine. They end up working in NGOs or other projects where the pay is significantly better.

Incentives are therefore important to make sure that our medical practitioners are picked from the best and not just picked, but also retained into practice. We need this because for a highly ambitious country that is gunning for middle-income status, quality of life is something paramount.