Education and Health
The Rwandan government provides free education in state-run schools for nine years: six years in primary and three years following a common secondary programme. President Kagame announced during his 2010 re-election campaign that he plans to extend this free education to cover the final three secondary years. Many poorer children still fail to attend school because of the necessity of purchasing uniforms and books and commitments at home. There are many private schools across the country, some church-run, which follow the same syllabus but charge fees. A very small number offer international qualifications. From 1994 until 2009, secondary education was offered in either French or English; because of the country's increasing ties with the East African Community and the Commonwealth, only the English syllabi are now offered. The country has a number of institutions of tertiary education, with the National University of Rwanda (UNR), Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) being the most prominent. In 2011, the gross enrolment ratio for tertiary education in Rwanda was 7%, from 4% in 2008. The country's literacy rate, defined as those aged 15 or over who can read and write, was 71% in 2009, up from 38% in 1978 and 58% in 1991.
The quality of healthcare is generally low, but improving. In 2010, 91 children died before their fifth birthday for every 1000 live births, often from diarrhoea, malaria or pneumonia. However, this figure is improving steadily; in 1990 there were 163 under five deaths for every 1000 live births. There is a shortage of qualified medical professionals in the country, and some medicines are in short supply or unavailable. 87% have access to healthcare but there are only two doctors and two paramedics per 100,000 people. The government is seeking to improve the situation as part of the Vision 2020 development programme. In 2008, the government spent 9.7% of national expenditure on healthcare, compared with 3.2% in 1996. It also set up training institutes including the Kigali Health Institute (KHI). Health insurance became mandatory for all individuals in 2008; in 2010 over 90% of the population was covered. Prevalence of some diseases is declining, including the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus and a sharp reduction in malaria morbidity, mortality rate, and specific lethality, but Rwanda's health profile remains dominated by communicable diseases. HIV/AIDS seroprevalence in the country is classified by the World Health Organization as a generalized epidemic; an estimated 7.3% of urban dwellers and 2.2% of rural dwellers, aged between 15 and 49, are HIV positive.
Read more about this topic: Health In Rwanda
Famous quotes containing the words education and, education and/or health:
“Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.”
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“Most days I feel like an acrobat high above a crowd out of which my own parents, my in-laws, potential employers, phantoms of “other women who do it” and a thousand faceless eyes stare up.”
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