Over a year has passed since Rwanda first launched a stand-alone national palliative care policy in April 2011, making it the first country in Africa to do so.

Rwanda’s palliative care development has been spearheaded by the Ministry of Health, with support from the Palliative Care Association of Rwanda (PCAR) and other local partners, including Partners in Health, Mildmay, the Rwanda Biomedical Centre and Intrahealth International.  

Rwanda chose to take a top-down approach in streamlining the process to a national stand-alone palliative care policy, with policy led by government decision-makers.

This approach contrasts with that of many other African countries - such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi - where service providers continuously push for governments to embrace palliative care and support palliative care development in more of a bottom-up approach, where policy is developed and informed by practice on the ground. 

Read the full article by Grace Munene on the Africa edition of ehospice.