The Government of Rwanda has acquired an advanced equipment known as ‘Flow Cytometry’ used for oncology tests, mainly for blood cancer, and the services are to be paid by Mutuelle de sante.
Before this machine was bought, the tests were sent to South Africa once in a month.
One cancer patient who talked with Kigali Today said that these services are very expensive, but having to find such services here and on Mutuelle de sante insurance will help a lot with the financial burden and quality of services.
This Flow Cytometry which cost more than $1 million, has a capacity of processing 150 samples in a hour and give results in 24 hours.
Dr Gilbert Uwizeyimana, a specialist at CHUK says this equipment is an answer to medical solution, and says it will contribute a lot to medical tourism.
he quotes ” before we had this machine, it was hard to test cancer, samples needed to be sent in foreign countries, mainly South Africa, and it could cost between 800,000 and 1 million rwf which could not be paid with Mutuelle de sante, and was expensive for a lot of people who couldn’t afford the services.”
Dr Uwizeyimana says this will reduce the amount of time this usually took, and will provide accurate results on which oncologists will base on to provide adequate treatment, not forgetting also promoting medical based tourism.
Usually Rwanda sent over 1000 samples to South Africa, and results could take up to a month to be available.
In 2018, estimates from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) indicate the incidence in Rwanda to be 10,704 new cancer diagnoses 4,520 cases among men and 6,184 cases among women were registered and annual mortality rates stood at 7,662.
The Government of Rwanda embarked on a journey to decrease the burden of disease through prevention, early detection, treatment, and care interventions. In 2016, the idea for a modern radiotherapy cancer centre, called Rwanda Cancer Centre (RCC), was established at Rwanda Military Hospital (RMH) in Kanombe as the first step in ultimately providing a full-service cancer centre. At the time, RMH already had advanced and existing cancer services in place and the human resource skills required to run the radiotherapy.
The newly completed radiotherapy unit is made up of two linear accelerators using Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT), which directly administers radiation to cancerous tumors, and one CT scan for treatment planning purposes. Thus far, 350 patients have been treated, and of the 350 treated patients, more than 57% have been covered by “Mutelle de Sante” while others have been privately funded.
Currently, the centre is averaging 50 patients per day with the capability to treat up to 150 patients per day at full capacity.
The facility will complement existing prevention, diagnosis, and treatment services including a 20-bed chemotherapy unit already in operation. In addition, the centre will allow full scale up of screening and early detection for cancers such as cervical, breast, and those related to hepatitis C virus.
