Partners in Health

Kirehe, Rwanda
In partnership with Partners in Health US

Launched in the spring of 2005 at the invitation of the Rwandan government, Partners in Health's (PIH) first project in Africa marked their determination to respond to the escalating crisis in global health. Bringing the PIH model of care to the continent that is the epicentre of the twin pandemics of poverty and disease.

PIH's Rwandan arm, Inshuti Mu Buzima (IMB), confronts this challenge as part of an innovative partnership among strongly committed public and private organizations, including the Rwandan Ministry of Health, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative.

Together, IMB and its partners have undertaken a commitment to scale up HIV treatment and care in rural Rwanda; to strengthen the country’s national training and evaluation programs; and to develop, document and disseminate a rural care model for HIV that can be adapted and replicated throughout Rwanda and other African countries.

With Rwinkwavu Hospital as its main referral site, IMB has expanded and now offers HIV prevention, testing, and treatment at all six sites in south-eastern Rwanda. Working in four health centres in Kirehe health district, they soon recognized the desperate need for a district hospital to serve a population of more than 350,000 people. PIH made a commitment to work with the Ministry of Health to build a district hospital in Kirehe in 2007.

As the new hospital is being built, clinical and laboratory facilities have been expanded and clinical staffing has been increased at the existing health centre. As of the end of September 2006, a total of 1,761 patients were receiving antiretroviral treatment across all six sites, with almost four thousand being tested and more than 100 new patients being enrolled on therapy every month.

Partners in Health US

PIH was founded in 1987 to deliver health care to the residents of the mountainous Central Plateau in Haiti. In the 20 years since then, PIH has expanded its operations to eight other sites in Haiti and five additional countries and has launched a number of other initiatives.

The work of Partners In Health is uniquely situated within "Four Pillars" of institutional support at our headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. PIH's work as a non-profit focusing on delivery of quality health care in poor communities benefits from longstanding ties to Harvard Medical School and one of its teaching hospitals, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as well as a more recent affiliation with the François-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. These alliances enable us to translate our lived experience serving the destitute sick into clinical and operational research, education and training paradigms, and programs and policies that reduce health disparities and improve treatment outcomes.

The five fundamental principles of their work are:

Access to primary health care
Free health care and education for the poor
Community partnerships
Addressing basic social and economic needs
Serving the poor through the public sector

The work of PIH has three goals: to care for our patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world. Through long-term partnerships with their sister organizations, they bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need and work to alleviate the crushing economic and social burdens of poverty that exacerbate disease. PIH believes that health is a fundamental right, not a privilege.

To find out more about PIH's amazing work please click here