Assessment of medical equipment and facilities need for effective healthcare delivery in Rwanda

Abstract

In the last ten years or so, Rwanda has made unprecedented progress in health indicators, e.g., reducing maternal deaths by more than 50% and infant and child deaths by more than 40%, and increasing the overall use of health services. The government has continued to prioritize the development of the health sector and is facilitating this with corresponding budget allocations. In addition, the government is now encouraging private sector participation in the provision and financing of high-quality health care through public-private partnerships (PPP) in the development and implementation of health care delivery. The healthcare sector is thus undergoing important improvement, giving rise to potential business opportunities. Despite these gains, the country faces the critical challenge of limited healthcare services in hospitals because machines and equipment are not enough in all hospitals. Another challenge is that there are no guidelines on the equipment needed in each hospital’s clinical department based on the number of patients to be managed. Therefore, the main objective of this project was to assess the medical equipment and facility needs in selected Rwandan public hospitals for effective healthcare delivery in Rwanda. To achieve the main objective of this research study, a site survey was conducted using the standard tools for data collection. A specifically structured questionnaire was used for the assessment. The collected data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. For quantitative analysis, SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL 60606 United States) was used, where graphs were presented to infer a deep interpretation of the results. At the end of this research study, the results showed that critical equipment are not available in all Rwandan hospitals. In assessed hospitals, maximum number of Doctor is 17 doctors to manage patients above 10,000 per year, nurses and midwifes are 89 at maximum, 50% of assessed hospitals do not have biomedical engineer. For medical equipment availability, dialysis machine, ventilator, endoscopy, mammograph and CT Scan are available at 33% for each and anesthesia machine, autoclave, echography, X-Ray are available at 83%.There is 20% of insufficiency of bed compared to the patients they have to manage and the infrastructure are not at standard level. Based on the services provided in each hospital, norms and guidelines describing what types of medical equipment should be available to guide procurement was developed.