Rwanda has ended the 5 day Maternal and Child Health week on a high note by launching a health campaign that will engage the public in understanding health challenges they are faced with and therefore take part in proposing and implementing emergent and sustainable solutions. The “Burera Iwacu Campaign” was launched on the 12th October 2018 in the Northern Province and it’s a partnership between The Ministry of Health, Imbuto Foundation and Rwanda Military Hospital. The areas of public engagement include; Antenatal Care, Family Planning and Early Child Development among others.

Aims of the campaign include; engaging the population and local leaders in a solution-driven leadership and behavior to eradicate critical health challenges for sustainable social and economic transformation, promoting healthy seeking behavior in terms of disease prevention and health promotion among population of Burera, promoting and strengthening local leaders ‘accountability in health care services, promoting family planning by increasing the access of family planning for both long and short term methods and to tackle the burden of childhood malnutrition through community based strategies to detect early cases of malnutrition and follow up in their home environment.

During the launch event, thousands of community members, health providers including community health workers, local leaders, security organs representatives and high level authorities including Board members of Imbuto Foundation, the Governor of the Northern Province, Minister of Local Government and Minister of Health as well as implementing partner institution including WHO, UNFPA, SFH and others, enjoyed talks and debates on health, family planning and reproductive health and discussed sustainable health solutions. 

Apart from the above launch, the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) week was launched on 8th October 2018 and it has achieved a lot in terms of reaching out to the community with health interventions. The integrated MCH week showed to be effective for short and long term health impacts. During the MCH week, health interventions including deworming for children, family planning, provision of Vitamin A tablets, screening for malnutrition and sensitizing the population about key health issues were given.