Kigali Workshop to Develop Country Integrated Disease Control Implementation Plans for Burundi and Rwanda
Representatives from several stakeholder organizations attended including the project administrator from GNNTDC based in Washington DC; representatives from WHO offices in both countries; the regional and country representatives from the donor, Geneva Global; Alan Fenwick and Artemis Koukounari from SCI; Marie-Alice Deville, programme manager designate; several local staff of The Earth Institute of Columbia University; and three representatives from the Christian Blind Mission (CBM). The international participants were joined by four Ministry of Health persons from Burundi, and local Rwandans. All who attended this workshop expressed their commitment to helping Rwanda and Burundi work towards disease control by sharing their different expertise. The Earth Institute will be the implementing agency in Rwanda and CBM will be the implementing agency in Burundi. GNNTDC has contracted both organisations to make use of their significant experience in both countries, thus saving on the time needed to start a new project. The presence of the two organizations in the respective countries will speed up the implementation of the project. During this workshop, work plans for mapping, data collection, implementation, monitoring and evaluation for both countries for the first 6 months were developed. These work plans were then presented to the Minister of State of the Rwandan Ministry of Health on day three during his visit to the workshop. The Minister expressed his satisfaction with the outcome of this workshop and stated his governments commitment to the project. While in Rwanda, Prof. Alan Fenwick, SCI Director, gave an interview which was published in ‘The New Times’ of Kigali explaining the concept of NTDs control in Rwanda. |
