Enabel’s Barame project, in collaboration with Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) through its Medical Technology Division (MTD) and the Maternal, Child, and Community Health Division (MCCH), organized a training workshop, from 13-17 February 2023, on the maintenance of infrastructures in health facilities.
The five-day workshop session held in Muhanga district, brought together infrastructure engineers and biomedical technicians from 16 hospitals from seven districts of intervention of Barame project.

They had an interactive and sharing experience on properly managing infrastructures and equipment under their daily responsibilities. According to the participants, the technical teams intervened in medical infrastructure only on call, resulting in a stressful situation for the technician as well as the hospital medical staff. It was also not easy for the biomedical technicians to be able to provide the required support that could meet the hospital accreditation processes, thus leading to poor qualifications of the health infrastructure when it came to ranking.
Currently, there are not enough civil engineers at the district level responsible for all infrastructure, including health. In many situations, they are overloaded; their efforts mainly focus on preparing the terms of reference for various infrastructures, supervising construction works, and proceeding to acceptance when construction is complete. The infrastructure engineer's time is limited and does not allow them to follow up on the maintenance of existing infrastructure.

Biomedical technicians were identified to backstop district infrastructure engineers purposely to avoid delays in making the health facility a conducive environment for patients. Having limited infrastructure skills, it was worth building their capacity and transferring some skills and knowledge on maintenance management. During this workshop, it was an opportunity to leverage participants on what is critical for health infrastructure maintenance, including preventive maintenance and inherent risks of losses when not done.

As result of the training, participants increased the feeling of ownership of health facility maintenance and collaboration. They created a communication platform and different reporting templates to help with quick intervention and appropriate management. A clear plan and a framework contract in place will alleviate the burden on Biomedical and infrastructure engineering staff from urgent calls for maintenance, which used to compromise their capacity to deliver the best service at the right time.

The biomedical engineer, whose time is split into equipment maintenance and infrastructure, will now be able to allocate her/his time for both services while waiting for hospitals to recruit a permanent infrastructure officer, where needed, to take full responsibility.

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