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Pediatric emergency medicine fellow Kim Fugok, DO, and neonatal medicine fellow Elizabeth O’Donnell, MD, train Rwandan physicians and anesthetists in pediatric intubation.
Pictured with Ellen Plumb, MD ’10, and James Plumb, MD ’74, are the Rwandan students who came to Jefferson in 2015: Providence Akingeneye, Peace Kakibibi and Benedicte Ndayishimiye.
SKMC Builds Relationships in Rwanda In 2005, medical students and faculty from Jefferson’s Department of Family and Community Medicine started the Rwanda Health and Healing Project, a community-oriented health project in two rural Rwandan villages. The program includes a partnership with the Rwanda Village Concept Project (RVCP), a Rwandan medical student-driven public health and community development organization. Two years later, Jefferson faculty and members of JeffHEALTH— a student-run organization aiming to help Africa link to improved health resources—developed an exchange program to bring RVCP medical students to Jefferson. Every year, Jefferson selects two to three Rwandan students for two-month rotations focused on primary care, community health and public health. Since 2007, 24 Rwandan students have completed this exchange program. This past September, Christopher Raab, MD, medical director of international medicine for Nemours—Jefferson’s pediatrics partner—took residents and fellows to the Remera-Rakoma District Hospital near Kigali, Rwanda, where Jefferson has cultivated clinical exchange and capacity-building programs. Raab and his group led hospital staff through Helping Babies Breathe, a clinical education program that outlines how to respond if a newborn isn’t breathing. Raab hopes to return to Rwanda next year and will send residents to conduct additional trainings in the meantime.
S idne y K immel M edical C ollege at T homas J efferson U niversit y
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