Mahama (Rwanda): the health component entrusted to “Save the children”

Since 2015, the health component has been managed by two NGOs : Save the children and Alight. But the latter has just been removed from the list. The UNHCR explains that it wants to make an improvement in the area of ​​health and hopes that irregularities denounced by beneficiaries will be corrected. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The handover and takeover ceremonies took place at the health center in the Mahama I area, which was run by the NGO Alight.

“Alight staff are no longer in charge of the Mahama I health center. It is really a good thing for us, these people were giving us a very bad service while they were taking care of ten villages in this area. Imagine that we had made the decision to go to the Mahama II health center run by Save the Children. So as it is Save the children that has to take care of all the areas, we are only happy about it”, react Burundian refugees.

They accuse Alight of having been characterized by its incompetences during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“For you to be evacuated by Alight, you would have to be about to die. Few people, very critical cases, were evacuated and only with an ambulance which does not normally have to make many shuttles. And yet with Save the children, anyone who asked for it was evacuated to Kigali[…]”, they testify while suspecting a form of corruption with Alight.

The UNHCR speaks of change in order to “improve the delivery of quality services in the field of health” and says it hopes that “irregularities will be corrected”.

Refugees say they are happy that even new agents will be recruited.

“[…], with a recruitment of new refugee nurses which should follow, we will be much more listened to”.

The UNHCR urges the new medical manager to be “more humanitarian than civil servant”.

The Mahama camp located far east Rwanda currently hosts more than 45,000 refugees, mostly Burundians.