Insight

On all levels of a health care system, it is critical that there is real trust. This is true for the patient-provider relationship on a case-by-case basis, and between colleagues but also true on a larger scale. The population of a country must be assured that they can trust their health sector to make choices that are in the best interest of the people, and to avail technologies and services equitably and safely. The only way to gain this trust is by actually providing the promised services and technologies guided by the principle of equity as is written in our constitution. 
 
When I returned to Rwanda in the mid-1990s to work as a pediatrician in Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK), alongside all the team of clinicians, we struggled day-to-day to keep children alive and healthy despite the lack of equipment and supplies to apply the best clinical practice. We saw so many unnecessary deaths during those years – we knew what it would take to save a life, but simply did not have the health professionals, the drugs, nor the technologies available to us to do so.