WAVE Rwandan Cap Knitting Project

Caps by the WAVE knitters

In the fall of 2009, we learned of the Partners In Health (http://www.pih.org) call for knitted caps

 for new babies born in the Burera District Hospital in  Rwanda, where resources are limited

and the weather can get very cold. Hospital staff concluded that the newborns' chances would

be greatly improved if each of them had a warm cap when they left the hospital, as are provided

to babies born in US hospitals. This caught the interest of several WAVE members who knit,

and we've knitted and sent off some 20 caps so far to the Boston office of Partners in Health.

 Information about the PIH project can be found at http://hotheadknitters.blogspot.com/. We thought

staff at the Boston office of Partners in Health, and perhaps people at the Burera District Hospital,

 might like our music too, so we enclosed our Sanctuary CD with the caps we've knitted for babies

 halfway around the world in Rwanda.

                                                                                                           RWANDA / INSHUTI MU BUZIMA

 Inshuti Mu Buzima (“Partners In Health” in the Rwandan national language, Kinyarwanda) is the first PIH project in Africa.

 Launched in the spring of 2005 at the invitation of the Rwandan government, the project marked our determination to respond

 to the escalating crisis in global health by bringing the PIH model of care to the continent that is the epicenter of twin pandemics

 of poverty and disease. Inshuti Mu Buzima (IMB) confronts this challenge as part of an innovative partnership among strongly

 committed public and private organizations, including the Rwandan Ministry of Health, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,

 Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative. Together, IMB and its partners have undertaken a commitment

 to scale up HIV treatment and care in rural Rwanda; to strengthen the country’s national training and evaluation programs;

 and to develop, document and disseminate a rural care model for HIV that can be adapted and replicated throughout Rwanda

 and other African countries.

   Patients waiting outside

Rwinkwavu Hospital in Rwanda