Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute in exchange pact with Rwanda and Zambia

Dar es Salaam. The Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute (JKCI) yesterday signed an agreement with similar facilities in Zambia and Rwanda in a landmark development that is geared at building the capacity of medical experts among African countries while promoting medical tourism and reducing referrals to outside the continent.

The agreements with Zambian National Heart Hospital (NHH) and the Rwanda King Faisal Hospital (KFH) will see the countries saving on the money they spend on sending their people outside the continent for medical referrals.

The historic agreements are the culmination of years of planning and investment by Save a Child’s Heart, an international humanitarian NGO based in Israel.

This signifies an important milestone in enhancing future cooperation in paediatric cardiac care between Zambia, Rwanda, and the existing centre in Tanzania.

Gracing the agreements signing event, the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr Grace Maghembe, said the pacts offer benefits to all the three countries involved.

The MoU, she said, will cement the good working relationships that Tanzania has with Rwanda and Zambia over the years.

Through the MoU Rwanda and Zambia will be able to send heart patients to Tanzania for treatment while their medical experts would also be coming to the JKCI for capacity building trainings.

“I was among the delegates who recently travelled with President Samia Hassan Suluhu to South Africa where she insisted on investing more in medical tourism among African countries as a way of bringing changes in the health sector…,” she said.

The JKCI Executive Director, Dr Peter Kisenge, said apart from training experts, the JKCI has a team working in different regions to train local health workers on how best they can detect heart patients from an early stage and refer them to JKCI before it is too late.

“We are happy to be part of this agreement as we will be able to save more lives even beyond Tanzania’s borders,” he said.

A Senior Medical Superintendent from the Zambia National Heart Hospital, Prof Chabwela Shumba, said his country has been working with Tanzania on bringing its heart patients and medical experts even before the MoU.

The agreement, he said, will give more room to continue working together as the two countries have always been partners in a number of other areas, including through the Tanzania-Zambia Railway which was initiated by founding Presidents Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere.

The Deputy Director at King Feisal Hospital in Rwanda, Frederick Ngirabacu, said the agreement was another milestone for the African continent to support each other and get solution together as a continent.

He thanked Tanzania and Israel for supporting Rwanda on giving training and treating its patients. He calls for more collaboration in future to take Africa to the next level.

The cooperation was made possible following a long-standing partnership between Save a Child’s Heart in Israel and the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute in Tanzania, which includes having treated more than 1,000 Tanzanian children for congenital heart conditions over the last 20 years, training 23 medical professionals in specialized paediatric cardiac care, equipment and medical disposables donations, as well as continued support for the centre’s activities.

Today, the JKCI independently performs hundreds of paediatric cardiac procedures, both surgeries and catheterisations, thanks to a number of initiatives to train the manpower by the government, including through the knowledge and skills gained in Israel through the Save a Child’s Heart training programs and ongoing medical missions, sponsored by Save a Child’s Heart Canada.

In a statement availed to The Citizen yesterday by Save a Child’s Heart (Israel), the organisation said it was currently training in Israel the first Paediatric Cardiac team of Zambian medical professionals, among them Zambia’s first specialist paediatric cardiac surgeon, who recently returned home after completing four and a half years of training in Israel, and leads the program at the Zambia National Heart Hospital.

This week a team of three physicians from the King Faisal Hospital in Kigali will arrive in Israel to start their training in Paediatric Cardiology, Paediatric Intensive Care and Anaesthesia.

Dr. Lior Sasson, Save a Child’s Heart lead surgeon, said: “I am extremely proud to witness the lifesaving activity taking place here at the JKCI carried out by my Mentee Dr. Godwin Godfrey who is the first Pediatric Cardiac surgeon of Tanzania. I look forward to working with Dr Ziwa, Zambia's first Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon trained in Israel, to build a pediatric cardiac center of excellence at the NHH, and today starts the training in Israel of the first Pediatric Cardiac Team from Rwanda”.

Simon Fisher, Executive Director of Save a Child’s Heart, said: “Save a Child’s Heart is excited to witness the signing of the two MOUs representing the expansion of its activities throughout the African continent based on South-South partnership and cooperation.

He added, “Now that JKCI has become a center of excellence for Sub Sahara Africa our capacity building activities have potentially doubled taking place in two centers; Save a Child’s Heart in Israel and JKCI in Tanzania.”