Dr Jules Ndoli recently visited Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as part of a joint project with University Teaching Hospital Butare.

The project, funded by the Tropical Health Education Trust (THET), joins up researchers from Imperial College London, clinicians from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and staff at Butare University Teaching Hospital. It is jointly run by Professor Alison Holmes, Director of Infection Prevention and Control for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Dr Thomas Lissauer, Paediatric Programme Director at the School of Public Health Epidemiology, and Dr Jules Ndoli, Director of Infection Control at Butare University Teaching Hospital.

Working alongside staff in Rwanda, the team from Imperial has helped to design a series of training packages for staff at CHUB to combat maternal and paediatric infection in the hospital. Over the course of two years, members of the Infection Control team at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust delivered workshops in Rwanda to kick off the training process.

Workshops focussed on three main areas; hand hygiene among nursing staff, setting up and cleaning equipment for newborn infants and reducing the rate of surgical site infections following births by caesarean section.

The project has been a great success.  The microbiology staff at CHUB now hold regular lectures on managing infection among babies and expectant mothers, which are very well attended. In addition to this, the original training materials have gone on to be included in national neonatal guidelines published by the Rwandan Ministry of Health.

Dr Jules Ndoli, the infection control lead at CHUB, recently visited Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to see how things are done in the UK. Dr Ndoli spent a week visiting various areas of the trust , including sitting in on a meeting of the Patient Safety Splinter Group, meeting with the Associate Medical Director for Safety and Effectiveness and shadowing the IPC nurses.

Both Dr Ndoli and Professor Holmes agreed that staff in the UK and Rwanda have all learned a great deal from this collaboration and welcomed the possibility of future projects together.