Chronic disease in rural Rwanda

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"I couldn't work in the garden. I couldn't clean. I couldn't care for my child. I couldn't really do anything for myself," says Anet Mukakibibi, a woman living with asthma in rural Rwanda. "I couldn't even manage to build a fire to cook food." 

PIH's partner organization in Rwanda, Inshuti Mu Buzima (IMB), is strengthening its services for treating patients with asthma and other chronic, non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes and epilepsy. These services are not only delivered at the hospital-level, but also in the homes and communities of the patients by trained community health workers.  

Learn more about treating non-communicable diseases in poor communities. 

To call attention to the plight of poor patients suffering from non-communicable diseases, Partners In Health and its partners at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital have joined with numerous likeminded organizations to host a landmark conference, “The Long Tail of Global Health Equity: Tackling the Endemic Non-Communicable Diseases of the Bottom Billion,” on March 2-3, 2011.