COMMENT: Africa’s new medical school

Rwandans will invite these international students to visit their communities to observe their traditions and learn how to care for their people. The young men and women will attend Rwandans’ weddings and funerals, learn to prepare and enjoy their foods, and acquire some of their language, the portal through which to view their sturdy values. Rwandans will teach their international guests that in Africa, family is an all-encompassing concept, and that, in Rwanda, an entire generation treats the next as its own children. The international network of UGHE alumni, unified by their commitment to realise health equity for their own communities, will become a global force for change.

UGHE will also strengthen Rwandan society. Though regarded by many as one of the safest and least corrupt societies in the world, Rwanda faces a great shortage of doctors and nurses. There are 684 physicians in Rwanda, a total that is far below the 1,182 physicians proposed by the Ministry of Health, and only 27% of the World Health Organisation’s recommended minimum of 2,576 physicians.

UGHE has already generated jobs, by hiring local labourers, and has increased access to the region, by creating new roads. It could boost Rwanda’s GDP by 0.5% per year, and every dollar invested in UGHE could generate $2 worth of return in economic development, according to McKinsey & Company.

Some social scientists assert that poverty is not just a matter of poor nutrition, lack of medical care, and inadequate shelter; it also means exclusion from global networks of trade, science and commerce. This isolation is pernicious, because it destroys people’s hope and aspirations for a better life.

UGHE will be Rwanda’s newest institution, a public-private collaboration based on traditional values: community, trust, hard work, and optimism about the future. It will integrate each citizen of Rwanda into global networks of learning.

The Rwandans will accomplish this, as they do many things, because they believe that the only investment that can bring infinite returns is in their children, and because graduates of the University of Global Health Equity will be their sons and daughters, too.

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Michael Fairbanks, a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, is Chairman of the Board of Silver Creek Medicines.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017.
www.project-syndicate.org